g forth a bar of a beautiful melody
and then losing it again. He does not know what quiver or what turn his
note will take before it ends; the note leads him and completes itself.
His music strives to express his keen appreciation of the loveliness of
the days, the golden glory of the meadow, the light, and the luxurious
shadows.

Such thoughts can only be expressed in fragments, like a sculptor's
chips thrown off as the inspiration seizes him, not mechanically sawn to
a set line. Now and again the blackbird feels the beauty of the time,
the large white daisy stars, the grass with yellow-dusted tips, the air
which comes so softly unperceived by any precedent rustle of the hedge.
He feels the beauty of the time, and he must say it. His notes come like
wild flowers not sown in order. There is not an oak here in June without
a blackbird.

Thrushes sing louder here than anywhere else; they really seem to sing
louder, and they are all around. Thrushes appear to vary their notes
with the period of the year, singing louder in the summer, and in the
mild days of October when the leaves lie brown and buff on the sward
under their perch more plaintively and delicately. Warblers and
willow-wrens sing in the hollow in June, all out of sight among the
trees--they are easily hidden by a leaf.

At that time the ivy leaves which flourish up to the very tops of the
oaks are so smooth with enamelled surface, that high up, as the wind
moves them, they reflect the sunlight and scintillate. Greenfinches in
the elms never cease love-making; and love-making needs much soft
talking. A nightingale in a bush sings so loud the hawthorn seems too
small for the vigour of the song. He will let you stand at the very
verge of the bough; but it is too near, his voice is sweeter across the
field.

There are still, in October, a few red apples on the boughs of the trees
in a little orchard beside the same road. It is a natural orchard--left
to itself--therefore there is always something to see in it. The palings
by the road are falling, and are held up chiefly by the brambles about
them and the ivy that has climbed up. Trees stand on the right and trees
on the left; there is a tall spruce fir at the back.

The apple trees are not set in straight lines: they were at first, but
some have died away and left an irregularity; the trees lean this way
and that, and they are scarred and marked as it were with lichen and
moss. It is the home of birds. A bla