and his lay, like the sap in the bough from which he sings, rises without
thought. Nor is it necessary that it should be a song; a few short notes
in the sharp spring morning are sufficient to stir the heart. But
yesterday the least of them all came to a bough by my window, and in his
call I heard the sweet-briar wind rushing over the young grass. Refulgent
fall the golden rays of the sun; a minute only, the clouds cover him and
the hedge is dark. The bloom of the gorse is shut like a book; but it is
there--a few hours of warmth and the covers will fall open. The meadow is
bare, but in a little while the heart-shaped celandine leaves will come
in their accustomed place. On the pollard willows the long wands are
yellow-ruddy in the passing gleam of sunshine, the first colour of spring
appears in their bark. The delicious wind rushes among them and they bow
and rise; it touches the top of the dark pine that looks in the sun the
same now as in summer; it lifts and swings the arching trail of bramble;
it dries and crumbles the earth in its fingers; the hedge-sparrow's
feathers are fluttered as he sings on the bush.

I wonder to myself how they can all get on without me--how they manage,
bird and flower, without me to keep the calendar for them. For I noted it
so carefully and lovingly, day by day, the seed-leaves on the mounds in
the sheltered places that come so early, the pushing up of the young
grass, the succulent dandelion, the coltsfoot on the heavy, thick clods,
the trodden chickweed despised at the foot of the gate-post, so common
and small, and yet so dear to me. Every blade of grass was mine, as
though I had planted it separately. They were all my pets, as the roses
the lover of his garden tends so faithfully. All the grasses of the
meadow were my pets, I loved them all; and perhaps that was why I never
had a 'pet,' never cultivated a flower, never kept a caged bird, or any
creature. Why keep pets when every wild free hawk that passed overhead in
the air was mine? I joyed in his swift, careless flight, in the throw of