blackbird whistling now--you listen. There, he's somewhere in the copse.
Why can't you listen to him, and be happy now?"

"I will be happy, dear, as you are here, but still it is a long, long
time, and then I think, after I am dead, and there is more wheat in my
place, the blackbirds will go on whistling for another thousand years
after me. For of course I did not hear them all that time ago myself,
dear, but the wheat which was before me heard them and told me. They told
me, too, and I know it is true, that the cuckoo came and called all day
till the moon shone at night, and began again in the morning before the
dew had sparkled in the sunrise. The dew dries very soon on wheat, Guido
dear, because wheat is so dry; first the sunrise makes the tips of the
wheat ever so faintly rosy, then it grows yellow, then as the heat
increases it becomes white at noon, and golden in the afternoon, and
white again under the moonlight. Besides which wide shadows come over
from the clouds, and a wind always follows the shadow and waves us, and
every time we sway to and fro that alters our colour. A rough wind gives
us one tint, and heavy rain another, and we look different on a cloudy
day to what we do on a sunny one. All these colours changed on us when
the blackbird was whistling in the oak the lightning struck, the fourth
one backwards from me; and it makes me sad to think that after four more
oaks have gone, the same colours will come on the wheat that will grow
then. It is thinking about those past colours, and songs, and leaves, and
of the colours and the sunshine, and the songs, and the leaves that will
come in the future that makes to-day so much. It makes to-day a thousand
years long backwards, and a thousand years long forwards, and makes the
sun so warm, and the air so sweet, and the butterflies so lovely, and the
hum of the bees, and everything so delicious. We cannot have enough of
it."