JUNE


There is always a cuckoo that stays out later than the other
cuckoos....

Two goldfinches came and sang in the catalpa-tree in the garden....

It is difficult to decide with which sentence to begin. There are so
many pleasures. The goldfinches have not come back again, however.
They and the faint blue flowers of the catalpa turned a sinister
growth for an interval into a small Paradise of colour and song. Then
the flowers fell. They had no more life than snow in May. Coming as
they did at the end of years of barrenness, they astonished one like
the blossoming of the Rose of Sharon. But now the bough is dark and
sinister and melancholy again. Sparrows squabble over their love
affairs in it. The, cuckoo that stays out later than the other cuckoos
is the triumphant survivor.

Not that there is much to be said even for him as a model of
continuance. His note will soon change. He will become hoarse and only
half-articulate. He will cease to be the flying echo of the mystery of
skies and wood at dawn and in the still evening. The disreputable bat,
whose little wings flutter half visibly like waves of heat rising
above a stove, will outlast him.

There is no getting beyond the old image of things in general as a
stream that disappears. The flowers and the birds come in tides that
sweep over the world and in a moment are lost like a broken wave. The
lilacs filled with purple; laburnum followed, and in a few days all