of the green fields dwells, the days would be only partly summer.
Without the violet, all the bluebells and cowslips could not make a
spring, and without the blackbird, even the nightingale would be
but half welcome. It is not yet noon, these songs have been
ceaseless since dawn; this evening, after the yellowhammer has sung
the sun down, when the moon rises and the faint stars appear, still
the cuckoo will call, and the grasshopper lark, the landrail's
"crake, crake" will echo from the mound, a warbler or a blackcap
will utter his notes, and even at the darkest of the summer night
the swallows will hardly sleep in their nests. As the morning sky
grows blue, an hour before the sun, up will rise the larks, singing
and audible now, the cuckoo will recommence, and the swallows will
start again on their tireless journey. So that the songs of the
summer birds are as ceaseless as the sound of the waterfall which
plays day and night.

I cannot leave it; I must stay under the old tree in the midst of
the long grass, the luxury of the leaves, and the song in the very
air. I seem as if I could feel all the glowing life the sunshine
gives and the south wind calls to being. The endless grass, the
endless leaves, the immense strength of the oak expanding, the
unalloyed joy of finch and blackbird; from all of them I receive a
little. Each gives me something of the pure joy they gather for
themselves. In the blackbird's melody one note is mine; in the
dance of the leaf shadows the formed maze is for me, though the
motion is theirs; the flowers with a thousand faces have collected
the kisses of the morning. Feeling with them, I receive some, at
least, of their fulness of life. Never could I have enough; never
stay long enough - whether here or whether lying on the shorter
sward under the sweeping and graceful birches, or on the thyme-