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Idler In The Wilds - Tickner Edwardes · William Shakespeare Works Collection

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  Speaker 1: Chapter one of An Idler in the Wilds by Tickner Edwards.
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  Speaker 1: This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
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  Speaker 1: the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please
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  Speaker 1: visit LibriVox dot org. An Idler in the Wilds by
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  Speaker 1: Tickner Edwards. In the home of the sedge Warbler, the
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  Speaker 1: river flows deep through its jungle of reeds from the
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  Speaker 1: cool shade of the willows on the bank. You get
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  Speaker 1: only a glimpse of it now, and then when the faint,
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  Speaker 1: slow wind of the summer noon parts the green thicket
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  Speaker 1: for a moment and shows you the sun spangled floor
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  Speaker 1: of the waters gliding noiselessly by. And with the noon
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  Speaker 1: has come the midday sloth and silence upon everything. All
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  Speaker 1: is quiet at last in the wood behind. The blackbird
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  Speaker 1: has laid down his flute, and the thrush is done
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  Speaker 1: with his piping. Only the sedge bird lingers on by
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  Speaker 1: the water side in the stillness of the torrid day,
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  Speaker 1: fretting the sunlight with his peevish note. Wherever the green
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  Speaker 1: reads growth they ca tall. There you are sure to
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  Speaker 1: find the sedge warbler and his complaining song. But you
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  Speaker 1: cannot see him now. And unless he chooses to declare himself,
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  Speaker 1: may never see him peer as intensely as you will.
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  Speaker 1: His is only a voice out of the silence. He
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  Speaker 1: hides in the dense reed cover, flitting restlessly from stem
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  Speaker 1: to stem and keeping up his rich, low, chiding melody
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  Speaker 1: as he goes. Only when he flies straight across the
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  Speaker 1: open stream can you get a sight of the little
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  Speaker 1: gray brown songster. And then in a moment he is
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  Speaker 1: lost to view again, and the quick staccato of his
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  Speaker 1: music breaks out from a new vantage point, more richly,
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  Speaker 1: more querulously than ever. He seems always out of humor.
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  Speaker 1: With the hot sunshine, the brighter and stiller the day,
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  Speaker 1: the more complainingly he sings. But it is only like
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  Speaker 1: a great prima donna scolding at her maid. Not all
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  Speaker 1: awayward fretfulness of the moment can hide the invincible beauty
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  Speaker 1: of her tone. And the sedge warbler is an artist
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  Speaker 1: too great enough in his way. In the North they
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  Speaker 1: call him the Irish nightingale. But if you speak of
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  Speaker 1: the English mockbird here in southern Sussex, everyone will know
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  Speaker 1: the bird you mean. Listen to him now, as he
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  Speaker 1: works invisibly to and fro in the waving green cover.
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  Speaker 1: There is his own fretful, girding note, continuously pouring out
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  Speaker 1: into the hot, still air. But every minute or two
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  Speaker 1: he passes without a break into quite an alien melody.
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  Speaker 1: Now it is a song of the housetop, the quiet,
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  Speaker 1: deep chuckling chorus of the swallow as he sits among
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  Speaker 1: the gray gold lichens of some cottage roof tree, chanting
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  Speaker 1: the sundown into its western bed. Now it is the
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  Speaker 1: warble of a thrush, wonderfully imitated, with its crystal minuendo,
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  Speaker 1: changing in a moment to the quick, harsh chirping of
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  Speaker 1: the sparrow, then back once more into the bird's own
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  Speaker 1: violent chiding strain. And while you are still marveling over
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  Speaker 1: these capricious changes, suddenly a note comes out of the
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  Speaker 1: thicket which you have always listened for. High up in
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  Speaker 1: the sunny blue overhead. It is the skylark's song. Trills, crescendos,
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  Speaker 1: kentish bellfires, all complete. But even as you press silently
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  Speaker 1: forward for a nearer place in your leafy concert hall,
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  Speaker 1: it breaks off as unexpectedly as it began. The prima
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  Speaker 1: Donna is scolding her tiring woman again with a more
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  Speaker 1: furious sweetness than ever you feel that it is all
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  Speaker 1: out of tune with the hot sunshine and the rich,
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  Speaker 1: slothful murmur of the river deep in its cleft of green.
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  Speaker 1: The blackbird had an apt to music when he sat
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  Speaker 1: in the oak spray, his golden dagger of a bill
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  Speaker 1: a gleam in the shadows, singing tenor to the rippling
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  Speaker 1: soprano of the thrush. Even the little oxeye, slowly clashing
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  Speaker 1: his silver cymbals up in the topmost branches, gave more
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  Speaker 1: to the burning light and greenery than this car riden songster,
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  Speaker 1: grudging his scant half measure of music to the summer's day.
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  Speaker 1: But you cannot dwell long in the midst of wild
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  Speaker 1: nature without recognizing how much of art underlies it.
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  Speaker 2: All.
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  Speaker 1: The dreaming light, the surfeit of colour, and the silence
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  Speaker 1: that is really nothing but dim sound, would all end
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  Speaker 1: in monotony if there were no contrasts to set off
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  Speaker 1: its squandered fragrance and unceasing pageantry of beautiful things. And
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  Speaker 1: so the little sedge warbler is destined to sit in
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  Speaker 1: the reed break forever, girding at the sunshine and tempering
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  Speaker 1: the hot, sweet noontide with its litany of care. Though
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  Speaker 1: the sedge bird's favorite horns is always the thick reed jungle,
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  Speaker 1: he never seems to make his home there. A kind
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  Speaker 1: of vanity of self abasement, as human like as all
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  Speaker 1: his other qualities, appears to drive him to choose the
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  Speaker 1: lowliest spots for his bed. Amidst the ivy, on the
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  Speaker 1: willow stoles, or in the long grass under the river bank,
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  Speaker 1: he weaves together the dry bents and sedges that loosely
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  Speaker 1: form his nest. If you look for it, you may
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  Speaker 1: never find it, so cunningly is it ambushed. But the
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  Speaker 1: sedge bird's mate, less careful than himself, will invariably betray
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  Speaker 1: its situation if you chance that way. Threading your path
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  Speaker 1: over the saggy ground where the willows grow between the
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  Speaker 1: bank and the green reed cover, a sudden grating note
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  Speaker 1: strikes upon the ear, and out from her hiding place,
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  Speaker 1: the sitting bird tumbles, rending the air with her harsh,
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  Speaker 1: strident note. If she had kept quiet, you would have
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  Speaker 1: passed on in another moment, never guessing that you had
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  Speaker 1: been so near to the coveted treasure. But fear, as
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  Speaker 1: it often does, has brought about the very disaster she
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  Speaker 1: would have prevented. All her ingrown caution vanishes. She flutters
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  Speaker 1: in and out of the place, never stopping her quick
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  Speaker 1: alarm note. Then a little method seems to join with
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  Speaker 1: her madness, but all too late, having marked the spot
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  Speaker 1: for you indubitably, now she tries to cajole you from it.
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  Speaker 1: She flies from bush to bush, and as you follow,
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  Speaker 1: goes on farther still. But she always ends by doing
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  Speaker 1: the wrong thing again in the old, pathetically simple way,
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  Speaker 1: going back in one straight, low pitched flight to her bower,
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  Speaker 1: and breaking out at once into her garrulous minstrel sea,
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  Speaker 1: with less of caution than ever. To these calm waters
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  Speaker 1: of sunshine and silence. There comes another b with the
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  Speaker 1: earliest summer days, a little larger than the sedge chat,
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  Speaker 1: and with his plumage of a brighter brown. The reed
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  Speaker 1: warbler strikes you at once as one of the wildest
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  Speaker 1: and shyest of birds. Where the river journeys on beneath
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  Speaker 1: drooping arches of woodland, you will see little of him.
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  Speaker 1: You must take boat and follow the stream down to
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  Speaker 1: the alluvial plains, and there in the treeless solitudes of pasture,
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  Speaker 1: with the green reed margin of the waters is higher
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  Speaker 1: and denser than ever. You will presently hear his incessant
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  Speaker 1: jarring note. He is no musician, the reed warbler. His song,
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  Speaker 1: though far gentler than the sedge birds, has none of
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  Speaker 1: its richness nor any of its borrowed strains. It is
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  Speaker 1: a mere, hurried, tuneless crer, drifting out of the whispering
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  Speaker 1: gloom of the thicket and blending oddly with the ripple
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  Speaker 1: of the water through its myriad stems. And yet there
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  Speaker 1: is an inexplicable pleasure in the note. It is as
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  Speaker 1: if the furnace like glow of the summer noon were
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  Speaker 1: being translated into its equivalent in sound. And for the
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  Speaker 1: first time another sense could take in the full meaning
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  Speaker 1: of the sunbeams pouring down from the glittering blue vault above.
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  Speaker 1: Here on the plains there is solitude enough for the
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  Speaker 1: wildest of creatures, and far and near the little reed
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  Speaker 1: warbler's voice rises into the tremulous, sultry air. He is
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  Speaker 1: famous among bird lovers all the world over, but it
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  Speaker 1: is not his dry circadian melody that has won him
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  Speaker 1: this repute. Turn the prow of your boat into the
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  Speaker 1: murmuring green fastness, just where you heard him piping. A
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  Speaker 1: moment back, the reeds divide with a hissing sound. Before
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  Speaker 1: the momentum of your boat has ceased, they have closed
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  Speaker 1: up behind you, and you are in a dim emerald grotto,
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  Speaker 1: with the turquoise of the sky for a roofing, and
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  Speaker 1: the charging sparkle of the waters below. Looking carefully round,
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  Speaker 1: At last you spy the object of your scrutiny. Far
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  Speaker 1: up in the rustling walls of your abiding place, hangs
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  Speaker 1: the reed bird's wonderful cradle. Delicately woven round three or
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  Speaker 1: four of the slender stems. It is safe above the
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  Speaker 1: highest flood mark, and deep fashioned, so that the roughest
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  Speaker 1: winds may not eject its treasure of mottled egg or
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  Speaker 1: callow young. With every breeze, it rocks gaily to and
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  Speaker 1: fro its very frailty of anchorage, proving its chief as safeguard.
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  Speaker 1: Unthinkingly you raise your hand. A touch of the fingers
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  Speaker 1: would bring it down and add it as a gem
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  Speaker 1: to your collection. But there is something in its sheer,
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  Speaker 1: daintiness and fairy like beauty that stays your grasp even
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  Speaker 1: as you set it, trembling on its airy scaffold, you
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  Speaker 1: give over your first rude impulse as a sacrilege. A
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  Speaker 1: moment more, and you have backed your boat out into
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  Speaker 1: the shimmering highway of the waters, and are pulling steadily
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  Speaker 1: homeward against the tide. End of chapter one, chapter two
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  Speaker 1: of An Idler in the Wilds by Techner Edwards. This
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  Speaker 1: libribox recording is in the public domain. The flight of
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  Speaker 1: the Swift, When in the enduring heat of summer, the
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  Speaker 1: hay has been carried, and the shorn meadows lie in
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  Speaker 1: pallid green under the rich sunset dark of the trees,
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  Speaker 1: the screaming swift seems to come suddenly into importance. Cuckoo
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  Speaker 1: and nightingale are gone, or silent love song and nesting
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  Speaker 1: lullaby have given way to the eternal twittering of the
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  Speaker 1: young birds in the hedgerows and woods. But the lordly
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  Speaker 1: swift seems more mightier of wing and voice than ever,
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  Speaker 1: And the evening silence that has gathered now over field
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  Speaker 1: and woodland serves but to throw his wild aerial music
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  Speaker 1: into stronger, stranger relief. The long summer day is ending
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  Speaker 1: as it began, hot and stifling and breathless to the
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  Speaker 1: last aberlize of its molten cup. Eastward, the deep night
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  Speaker 1: sky is lifting and lighting the stars up one by one,
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  Speaker 1: and the crooked sickle of the moon stands out, suddenly
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  Speaker 1: near and water bright. Yet the Swifts never stop in
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  Speaker 1: their mad race to and fro under the darkening heaven.
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  Speaker 1: Louder and shriller grows their wild chorus in twos and threes,
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  Speaker 1: in whole battalions they sweep by overhead, wheeling, eddying, swerving
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  Speaker 1: hither and thither, when every other feathered thing has gone
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  Speaker 1: to roost, and only the weary bats are out to
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  Speaker 1: keep them twilight company. There is a mystery in this
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  Speaker 1: nightly frolic of the Swift that baffles alike imagination and conjecture.
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  Speaker 1: The mad excitement of it all is beyond a doubt.
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  Speaker 1: Yet the fierce, tumultuous note is not a battle cry.
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  Speaker 1: No one who has watched this stalwart brotherhood at their
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  Speaker 1: work in the deepening sunset light can fail to mark
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  Speaker 1: the utter absence of contention among them. Rivalry there is
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  Speaker 1: in every movement, but it is that of soldiers storming
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  Speaker 1: a breach, intense competition, side by side, with perfect unanimity
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  Speaker 1: of purpose. It is no war challenge. This piercing note
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  Speaker 1: of the swifts whirling past in the dim soft light,
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  Speaker 1: now dark against the vaporous saffron of the western sky,
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  Speaker 1: Now like a flight of golden arrows, as they swing
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  Speaker 1: up into the still air and catch the last yellow
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  Speaker 1: glances of the day on their flickering scythe shaped wings.
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  Speaker 1: But now as a great company of them dips together,
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  Speaker 1: taking the whole circle of the valley in one lightning sweep,
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  Speaker 1: a clue comes in the dilemma. As they speed by,
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  Speaker 1: scarce a dozen feet overhead. Something strangely familiar rings in
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  Speaker 1: their joyous clamor, and the rushing sound of their flight
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  Speaker 1: to the mind's eye flash a vision, a winter picture
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  Speaker 1: of hounds in full cry, and the scarlet of the
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  Speaker 1: hunt behind, a picture of deep jubilant pleasure. In all
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  Speaker 1: the fierce color and movement and ding dong fury of
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  Speaker 1: the chase. It is a hunt, this mad merry race
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  Speaker 1: of the swifts at eventide. The shrill scream is their
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  Speaker 1: view hello, their hunting chorus, the primeval instinct of all creatures,
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  Speaker 1: for the chase is on them too, And like the foxhounds,
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  Speaker 1: they give voice to their exultation as they stream headlong
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  Speaker 1: by the day is all but gone. The blue night
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  Speaker 1: wins its way from star to star. Now the moon
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  Speaker 1: has a silvery counterpoise to every faint glimmer of gold
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  Speaker 1: still abiding in the topmost branches of the trees. Yet
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  Speaker 1: the swifts are mounting higher and higher. The life of
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  Speaker 1: the summer day is over for them, but another life
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  Speaker 1: is only just beginning their wonderful night life in the
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  Speaker 1: trackless region of the upper skies. Still watching them intently,
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  Speaker 1: you can see that a change is coming over their
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  Speaker 1: berserk gambols. They no longer speed, their jingling carryall to
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  Speaker 1: and fro, keeping more compactly together. Now they climb steadily
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  Speaker 1: upward into the sweet hot dusk, their free, joyful peeling
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  Speaker 1: note getting fainter and softer as they rise. The moments pass.
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  Speaker 1: Straining eyes and ears, you can only just make them
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  Speaker 1: out now, a little dark cloud against the bluer darkness
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  Speaker 1: and the silver of the flinching stars. You all but
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  Speaker 1: miss the lilt of their quiet song. Joy are still
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  Speaker 1: yet far away, as memories of music half a lifetime old,
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  Speaker 1: another instant, and the dim gray blotch has vanished. The
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  Speaker 1: song is gone, sight and hearing, tire and fail together,
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  Speaker 1: and willingly droop to earth again. You look about you wonderingly.
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  Speaker 1: While you were gazing, the night seems to have fallen
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  Speaker 1: suddenly upon everything. The glowworm has hung her glittering love
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  Speaker 1: lamp in the hedgerow, and the fern owls have begun
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  Speaker 1: their churring tremolo in the deepoke wood behind. Never a
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  Speaker 1: year goes by but some old folk saying some country
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  Speaker 1: superstition about birds and their doings is verified, or at
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  Speaker 1: least its error cleared away from the underlying germ of
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  Speaker 1: truth by modern thought and observation. This mysterious nocturnal flight
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  Speaker 1: of the swift has long given an uncanny tincture to
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  Speaker 1: his reputation among country dwellers, and most of all, with
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  Speaker 1: those whose business keeps them abroad at all hours of
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  Speaker 1: the day or night. Shepherds will tell you that's the
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  Speaker 1: devil swallow, as he is known amongst them, never sleeps
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  Speaker 1: and never rests. He hawks the whole night through, they say.
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  Speaker 1: Up there in the farthermost reachers of the summer nights,
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  Speaker 1: daybreak indeed will see him down again after the low
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  Speaker 1: flying insects. But the earliest heat of noon, reclaims him
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  Speaker 1: once more for the heights. He is up there in
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  Speaker 1: the blue. It is a verd so far above that
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  Speaker 1: no human eye can follow him, searching the ultimate air
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  Speaker 1: and sunshine for the wing descence that gives him perpetual
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  Speaker 1: vigor and life, until the declining day lures him down
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  Speaker 1: once more for a little space to seek the more
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  Speaker 1: earthly food with which he leavens his long banquets of ambrosia.
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  Speaker 1: But modern bird lore, while seeding the swift his hegemony
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  Speaker 1: of the night, denies him much of this old Promethean reputation.
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  Speaker 1: The truth is that he is no celestial fire stealer,
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  Speaker 1: no lover of the sweltering heat of noon. He is,
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  Speaker 1: of all things a bird of the golden mean of
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  Speaker 1: summer weather. And if when the sun is nearing its
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  Speaker 1: zenith he no longer weaves his mazy pattern on the
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  Speaker 1: glowing sky, it is no mothlike ambition to be nearer
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  Speaker 1: the sun's caresses that renders him invisible. If on any
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  Speaker 1: hot summer's morning you watch by the old church tower,
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  Speaker 1: where from time immemorial he has made his home, you
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  Speaker 1: will soon see the way of it. Long before the
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  Speaker 1: first chill wave of the dawn began to quench the starshine.
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  Speaker 1: His eager cry startled the darkness overhead. He sang the
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  Speaker 1: morning up silver gray, golden gray, rose gray, through to rippling,
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  Speaker 1: flamboyant crimson, and the final bravery of sunglow, kindling a
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  Speaker 1: thousand beacon fires from hill to hill, to and fro
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  Speaker 1: in the strengthening light. He came and went. The day
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  Speaker 1: got up in its first young might, laughing over the
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  Speaker 1: dew drops, to sea itself so fair. All through the ripe,
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  Speaker 1: rich morning, the swift's glad monotony of music filled the
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  Speaker 1: air about the old church steeple as he lanced to
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  Speaker 1: and fro between the popular sunlight and the twittering brood within.
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  Speaker 1: But now the last dew spangles are gone from the
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  Speaker 1: shadiest nook of the meadow. White hot, the summer sun
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  Speaker 1: beats down on the flagging greenery and the parched, dusty plains.
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  Speaker 1: All the gray hills are digging in the tremulous azure,
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  Speaker 1: and the swifts are coming home at last for their
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  Speaker 1: midday rest. One by one they circle downward to their eares,
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  Speaker 1: alighting at full speed with a clear, sharp impact on
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  Speaker 1: the crumbling stone, And none come forth again in the
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  Speaker 1: cool dark of the belfry loft, where the wind is
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  Speaker 1: forever sighing through the ancient jealousies. The Swift and his
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  Speaker 1: lifelong mate doze away the torrid heat of noon with
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  Speaker 1: their tweeting youngsters round them. A dozen pairs or more
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  Speaker 1: have built in the dusty precincts of the church tower
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  Speaker 1: for years, unnumbered, heedless of the swing of the great
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  Speaker 1: bronze bell that sets every timber groaning, or the chime
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  Speaker 1: that has been their cradle song, and may someday prove
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  Speaker 1: their requiem. This is the real abiding place of the
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  Speaker 1: sturdy deviling, when the day has got into its loftiest,
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  Speaker 1: fiercer stride. But with the first mild breath of evening,
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  Speaker 1: when the reddening sun strikes up through the lattice, barring
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  Speaker 1: with gypsy gold the cobwebs overhead, the whole colony will
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  Speaker 1: be up and out again, replenished of wing and voice
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  Speaker 1: for the sunset chase and the witchery of the coming
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  Speaker 1: starlight rebel. But if the Swift is transcendently a bird
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  Speaker 1: of the calm evening skies, he is nonetheless a striking
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  Speaker 1: figure in every phase of summer weather, in rain or shine,
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  Speaker 1: heydays or gray days, he seems as eager and often
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  Speaker 1: as vociferous a huntsman as ever, the flight of the
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  Speaker 1: swift has long been a major factor in the predictions
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  Speaker 1: of the rustic meteorologist, but it is difficult to see
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  Speaker 1: how his repute as a worldly wise man has arisen.
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  Speaker 1: For to the latter day observer of his habits, the
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  Speaker 1: swift would appear to do nothing invariably in the chilly, silent,
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  Speaker 1: windless stays, when not a leaf in the hilltop woodland stirs,
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  Speaker 1: nor a blade of meadow grass quivers, and the somber
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  Speaker 1: sky droops overhead, with the white porthole of the sun
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: gleaming in it. Rayless and cold. He is sometimes a
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: clamorous intruder on the higher stillness, and sometimes a sullen,
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: furtive flitter mutually examining the plains below. On boisterous sunny mornings.
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: His ways are even more capricious. Either he flings himself
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: madly into the uppermost frolic of wind and sunshine, or
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: he is nowhere to be seen, and the larks and
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: the house martins have the whole bright, scurrying sweep of
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: the heaven to their own devices. Even in the hottest,
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: stillest noons of summer, single swifts will keep persistently abroad,
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: searching the torrid air at every altitude, reckless of heat
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: and tribal precedent alike. But in one tremendous aspect of
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: the season, the deviling would seem to follow an invariable impulse.
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: When the great ragged storm cloud comes stretching over the
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: blue the flying prison house of a myriad sulfurous fires
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: and deep contending voices, and the wind swells in a
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: moment from a faint uns and breath to a screaming hurricane.
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: The toxin of this fantastic clan peels out, and from
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: far and near he gathers to the summons. The first
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: slow raindrops spatter on the dust grime leaves the blue
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: glittering forerunner of the tempest zigzags through the sky with
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: the deep challenge of the thunder, hurtling after it high
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: up against the sooty murk of the storm. The swifts
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: are congregating hundreds now where none were evident before, wheeling
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: in and out in a stately dance, their own wild melody,
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: joining bar full bar with the hoarser music of the hurricane.
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: Now the clatter of the rain grows faster and more furious,
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: with a rush and a roar, the torrent comes, dragging
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: over the hill. The gray earthline swamps out and vanishes.
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: The floodgates of the sky give way, and every other
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: sound is overcome with the deafening impact of the falling water.
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: It is a lost world now, a chaos of descending ocean,
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: with the cruel green armory of the tempest leaping continuously
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: from dark to dark, and far above in the thick
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: the fourth front of it all the swifts are whirling
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: in and out, a thousand strong, reveling in the strife
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: of fire and water, caring no more for the deluge
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: than they would for the lighter stew drop shed from
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: a summer rose. Of such heroic fashioning is the lordly
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: devil Swallow end of chapter two, Chapter three of An
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: Idler in the Wilds by Tickner Edwards. This libribox recording
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: is in the public domain. The hour of the tide
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: Tarrak Bay faced south by east, and the rose red
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: light of summer morning ever won its first bright finger
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: hold here where the great rocks went tumbling down far
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: into the mist and garlanded sea. Thus early, if the
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: day were to be fine, sure and waves alike were
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: often hidden under the same briney mystery, fold upon fold
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: of saire white gossamer, drifting idly by in the van
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: of the scarce perceptible breeze. Yet high above all round
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: the vast amphitheater of the bay, the broken rim of
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: the cliff stood up clear against the sky, flushed with
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: the rosy tincture of the morning, sharp cut like a
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: diadem of coral against the awakening blue. Then the sea
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: below was as yet only a voice seut of the
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: dim obscurity, A wandering complaint whispered along the shelving shore,
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: but hurtling up into the silence, like the twang of
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: a harp string, where east and west the rocks lay
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: out almost to the farther slimmit of the receding tide.
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: Nowhere else in the whole fair stretch of southern coastline
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: were their smoother, broader sands than in Tarrak Bay. Sloping
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: gently up to the base of the cliff, they joined
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: the rocky foothills lying close under the Beetling Heights, while
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: in the lowest face of the precipice were innumerable caves, unfathomed,
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: hollows of darkness, worn by the waters of ages gone by,
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: when the sea, with its unceasing onslaughter of breakers, had
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: hewn the bay out of the solid rock. But for
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: generations now the highest tides had reached scarce midway up
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: the yellow sand all its in. Most plains were dry
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: and powdery, full of green marri grass. And in the
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: loamy crevices of the foothills behind every sea flower bloomed
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: luxuriously in its season, pink thrift and golden horn poppies,
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: and the purple night shade that loves the salt breath
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: of even the wonderful sea, orringo like the gray green
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: holly strung with thistlebells, blue as the summer sky overhead.
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: So completely had the earth here won back its old
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: dominion from the waters, that the wildest tempest could do
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: no more than beat out its white rage harmlessly on
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: the shelving beach. But even in the quieter seasons, when
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: the sea lay in one calm plain of slumbrous azure
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: to the dim horizon, and the faint ripples made no
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: more sound than falling rose leaves, as they spent themselves
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: on the immutable sand far to the east and west,
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: where the grim rocks crowded down into the water, each
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: peering through dun wheattresses, which like over its fellow shoulder.
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: In storm or calm, there was ever a deep unrest.
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: The old feud still waged ceaselessly round these stubborn outposts.
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: No day were so calm, but a white spurt of
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: foam would hear and there rock it up into the
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: sunbeams from some unwary ripple trapped in the scissor jaws
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: of those gray crags. And in times of storm and
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: stress there was always berserk, conflict, horse thunder, peeling, and etna,
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: a foam flinging sky high, whole clouds of glistening sea froth,
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: constantly stripped off by the wind and scattered over the
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: level sand floor of the bay. When the air was
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: full of these careering foam bells, driving upon the face
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: like heavy rain, and non would come the real deluge
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: out of the blue, dark heaven, and then taking shelter
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: from the dual torrent in one of the many caves,
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: the voice of the sea would follow hard upon your heels,
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: roaring reverberating above, around, deep, echoing in the Sumerian gloom
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: behind you, until it seemed as if the earth itself
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: had roused again, kraken like from its primeval slumber, and
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: the old tremendous issues were once more at stake. But
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: it was in the fairest days of summer weather that
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: Tarak Bay was at its best, when with the coming
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: of August, the inland woods shut down into green, cryptic
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: labyrinths of silence, and the parched fields held no blither
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: music than the church of a cicada, or rarely the
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: yellowhammer's weary jingle. Out of the dusty break. Life in
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: Tarack Bay seemed only quickened by the torrid sunbeams to
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: a fuller, sweeter intensity. To the bird lover, the very
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: title marked at once its quality and venerable estate, now
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: no ornithologist worth the name is unaware that the Taracks,
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: the mottled, restless elements in every company of seagulls, are
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: only the young of the kittiwake, still in their first
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: year's dress. But it was otherwise in the days when
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: the longshore men christened this solitary place. Then the Tarak
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: was accounted a distinct species, just as many an old
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: time bird snarer believes in gray linets and blood lineits.
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: To this day, the herring gulls bred here in goodly numbers,
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: side by side with the kittiwakes, but in August their
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: nesting time was over, while the smaller, gentler girls were
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: still far from the end of family cares. Tarak Bay
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: was the immemorial stronghold of the kittiwakes. Every ledge and
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: cranny in the perpendicular heights was marked with their lime
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: washed cradles, neater fashion than with most of the careless tribe,
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: but still mere clumsy bulks of grass and matter. Seaweed
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: often crowded together, so that hardly an inch of space
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: divided nest from nest. Here, year after year they raised
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: their clamorous progeny, and as soon as the young Taracks
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: were strong enough of wing, let them fluttering and screaming
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: down to the water's edge to learn the sea craft
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: of their kind, matchless almost in the whole annals of BirdLife,
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: essentially marine. To watch a flock of kittiwakes at work
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: in Tarrak Bay of a breezy summer's morning was a
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: pleasure to become at only by dint of much perilous
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: scrambling over the weed grown barriers which flanked the bay
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: at either end. Slippery work it was, and a scatheless
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: passage hardly to be hoped for. But once this lonely
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: ocean sanctuary was gained, the great boulders, which strewed the
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: foreshore everywhere, gave ample cover for leisurely observation. The crying
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: of the girls went up into the sunny air like
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: some wild rhythmic sea chant. As the whole company worked slowly,
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: steadily onward against the breeze. To number them seemed past
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: all human effort. They formed a vast cloud of flickering pinions,
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: dark when they rose against the sky, glittering white as
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: winter stars. When a sagging line of them stooped to
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: the crested emerald of the sea, nothing escaped their myriad
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: eyed scrutiny. Every wave and shimmering green water furrow was
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: keenly reconnoitered, the birds, spreading out in regular, open order
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: like gunners over a field. And time after time, when
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: they had thus worked far out into the rough water
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: to windward, suddenly, as at a given signal, the greater
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: part of the flock would rise and stream back on
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: the wings of the wind to their former starting point,
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: and begin their steady, patient quartering of the waters over again. Often,
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: and especially in boisterous weather. The herring gulls would join
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: with the kittiwakes in these gargantuan hunting forays, mingling with
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: them peaceably enough. And then it was curious to note
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: the varying tactics of the two. The great herringull, with
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: its four foot stretch of wing, seemed clumsy, nervous, and slow,
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: always at odds with the turbulent breeze. A palpable distrust
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: of the water was upon him. When he spied some
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: floating treasure, he hovered indecisively about it, stooping lower and lower,
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: his long legs dangling in consequently beneath, And when at
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: last he sees the prize, the capture was made gingerly,
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: without wetting a feather, and he was up again in
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: a moment, looping along in his ponderous, apprehensive, elderly way,
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: in the track of his vociferating mates. But to the kittiwake,
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: all this riot of wind and sea and sunshine brought
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: only a resistless exultation. The joyous triple note from which
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: his name is coined, peeled out unceasingly far and near,
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: gliding and wheeling hither and thither, now volleying up into
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: the gem bright blue of the morning, Now skimming low
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: down in some yeasty trough of the deep. A wild
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: gaiety seemed to worde him onward and fill him with
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: a viking delight of the sea. And when his keen
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: eye marked the living silver wavering by through its green depths,
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: his was no stealthy dubiousness of attack. Hovering an instant
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: kestrel like, he always made a sudden, resolute plunge downward
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: at his prey, cleaving the water with the stroke of
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: a battle mace, the white spray spurting up and hiding
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: the whole bird for a moment, until he rose again,
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: with his long, bright pinions held jubilantly above him, and
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: the writhing quarry fast in his golden scimitar of a beak.
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: These were the brave, rollicking days of summer weather, when
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: from dawn to dusk of evening the white sea chargers
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: foamed and corvetted over the green and the southwest wind
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: and lulled its resounding music only with the coming of night.
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: But there were other days, days of imperial calm, long still,
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: breathless days of August sunshine, when life in Tarrak Bay
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: slowed down into a delicious pores of everything, when the
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: very sun seemed to stand still in the burnished blue
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: of heaven, and time himself to grow drowsy and fold
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: his rainbow wings to rest under the compelling opiates of
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: the light. One such day, of all others, spent in
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: this oblivious ocean Eden abides in the memory. It was
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: the mute, windless calm that so often follows a storm.
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: The gale had blown itself to a standstill overnight. Above.
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: The sky was intensely blue, washed bare by the deluge
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: from horizon to Earth, and the sunbeams poured down through
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: the tense hot air like molten gold. Below, the sea
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: lay in glassy stillness. As far as the eye could fathom.
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: Not a sound came out of the waters, and even
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: the gulls, under the spell of the sunshine had given
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: over their eternal crying and were afloat on the sapphire,
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: fast asleep in the noonday glare. It was the hour
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: of the tide, the hour when the water prints its
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: last light footsteps on the sweltering sand dwells for a
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: little space inert, shimmering, voiceless, and then by imperceptible degrees
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: begins to subside. The drowsy ripple music of the flood
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: had died away. The change had come, and now the
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: first glistening rim of wet sand began to show like
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: a bridle ribbon along the shore, and with it, in
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: a moment, the golden lethargy of the morning was shattered.
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: A stir came in the sleeping multitude. Far out in
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: the bay, one white wing lifted above the azure. The
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: old bright, busy note keened forth, Give we way, Give
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: we way quickly. Now the sunshine field with glancing pinions,
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: as the whole company winged its way lazily shoreward, with
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: shrill outcry to search the new bad sands for stranded treasure,
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: the living flotsam and jetsam of the vanished storm. End
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: of chapter three, Chapter four of An Idler in the
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: Wilds by Tickner Edwards. This LibriVox recording is in the
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: public domain. The song of the Skylark, What thou art
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: we know not? What is most like thee from rainbow clouds,
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: these flow not drops so bright to see, as from
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: thy presence showers a rain of melody. If ever, a
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: complete history of bird song comes to be written not
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: by the microscope eied Field clubman, who views nature merely
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: as a vast mosaic of interesting items, but by some great,
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: far seeing gene, as human as he is great, we
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: may then get some light throne on one at least
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: of the profounder mysteries of the countryside. The nightingale sings
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: to cheer his sitting mate. The cuckoo calls his wandering
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: womankind to him. When the stormcock peals from the topmost
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: branch of the rowan tree in the angry glow of sunset,
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: it is clearly exultation at the coming of wild weather
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: that impels his clarion. Note love or war or pride
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: of life accounts for nearly every song of the hedgerow
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: or green verge of woodland and overweening summer has long
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: since dulled and silenced motive and fleeting melody alike. But
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: the skylark song is not to be explained away on
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: any such hypothesis. Like the poor, it is always with us,
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: and like the rain, it falls on the just as
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: well as the unjust. And we know no more of
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: the song giver than that he ever seeks the great
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: arena of the upper skies for his music, making that
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: he must needs soar and sing. Be the winter's day
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: ever so gloomy, or the furnace fires of summer parching
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: the delivered earth, or milk white dawns of autumn, winning
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: the gray hills one by one out of the dim
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: star garden of the night. The commonest things in nature
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: are always the most beautiful. To link rarity with loveliness
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: is but the human infraction of the wider theme. Water
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: is everywhere, and color, form and sound have their last
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: word in the singing of the brooks azure and jade
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: of dreaming Lake or foaming torrent, the complex luster of
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: the sea, under the goad of winds that are themselves
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: the bravest color bearers of all. And this rippling wonder
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: music of the lark, accounted note by note through any
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: year of wind and rain and sunshine would outnumber the
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: very sand grains of all the shores of time. How little, indeed,
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: any other songster has to do with the sum of
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: nature's music year in and year out must have been
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: long since evident to the bird lover, accustomed to the
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: open air in all seasons, he who comes to the
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: con tree first with a prauls green leaves or the
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: full flood tide of blossom in may. Here is for
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: the most part only the fair weather friends of the countryside,
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: thrush and nightingale and blackbird are busy enough then, and
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: the year is trained insensibly earthward, even when at every
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: step the lark breaks from his dew soaked cover in
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: the meadow and startles a momentary wonder with the rich
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: joyousness of his springing fount of song. But a few
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: fathoms upward, each new singer is lost, like the others
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: in the multitude thronging the blue. If for a while
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: you try to follow him sight and hearingsing tire in
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: the dazzling sun glow, there is something over ascetic, well
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: nigh unreason in this passion for altitudes with such all
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: sufficing splendor rife below. For a moment you cannot but
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: realize what a vast ocean of melody fills the pathless blue.
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: But it is all too remote, too ultra human, because
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: too faultlessly joyous, and the nightingale soon begins anew her
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: tender plaint in the thicket hard by, with a more
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: winsome anguish than ever. Stylights of the silver symbols is
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: forgotten up there on his pillar of sunshine, in the
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: spell of the humbler earthlier strain below. But the dwindling
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: autumn days make the truth of the skylark's song supremacy
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: clear at last. Standing here in the lee of the
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: wood of a bright September morning, little diminution in the
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: sum of nature's melody is at first apparent. The old
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: sweet contention is abroad in the air, and the ancient
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: jealousies of summer winds are yet alive in the bickering treetops.
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: But ever and again, a strange lull descends upon everything,
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: like a stone dropping. The lark comes down, caroling as
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: he falls, until his wing touches the brown clod, and
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: the song is quenched as the light from a burning
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: torch cast into water. And then of a sudden, the
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: penurious autumn silence of woods and hedgerow stands revealed. Mary
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: piper and flute player, lighthearted jingler of castanets, and shrill
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: numbered choir of lesser voices. All the gay campanology of
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: the woodland is over, the ring is gone or mute
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: in the dusty thicket, and only the lark stays in
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: the forsaken concert hall, singing his blithess to the empty branches,
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: or the burden of the day upon him, as now
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: again he lifts into the crisp morning sunshine to quicken
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: heaven with his running fire of song. Yet here, in
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: the close set garden ground of country lanes, half the
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: real significance of the skylark's music is lost, even though
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: autumn has laid her hushing finger everywhere, and the voices
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: of riverside and Carvat are all but haunting memories. Wherever,
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: indeed a blade of grass grows. The vague and minstrelsy
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: of the lark, like joy articulate, follows the daily trend
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: of every season sun. But to know it in all
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: its pristine quality, the wide, untrammeled spaces of the earth
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: must be sought in the great horizons of the world,
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: breezy down and desolate seagirt, waste and wild bare moorland.
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: There alone the lark comes in to his full inheritance
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: of song the heart of the southern Highlands. The rolling,
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: windwashed downs of Hampshire and Sussex are places beyond all others.
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: To get the full import of his singing. In the
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: green shade and cumbered valleys, the sky is never wide
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: enough for him. We get only a detached, disjointed symphony.
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: Sun and wind cannot bear and blend the music we
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: knowwed so finely by the trees, But here on the
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: downs it has a widely different meaning. It is no
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: longer a single intermittent voice. A whole nation of singers
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: must be at large up there, in the limitless span.
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: There are no telltale pauses now, nor any sense of
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: isolated effort and halting a moment in your long swinging
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: stride over the turf to listen. It is impossible to
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: believe there is not some ordered correspondence between the musicians,
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: some plan of melody in which each takes subtle, preconcerted part.
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: On these first days of autumn, when the dew begins
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: to lie late in shady meadow corners, and the night
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: grows ever stronger and keener of wing, the failing season
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: brings with it an inscrutable melancholy to all Lowland scenes,
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: But the Downs know none of the whimperous half moods
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: of nature's sare and yellow leaf. The changes from season
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: to season are deep but little evident. Superficially in the
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: nadere of the year, when in the valley's slumbering winter
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: scarce stirs under the caress of the unshadowed midday sun,
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: the Downs are all Aeonian laughter. At the mere touch
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: of its lighter spem. On the plains, spring winds its
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: fairest garland through the hedgerows. Soon every April blossom comes
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: to the downside, yet only in minute sober replica, a
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: far echo of the thronging life beneath. Even in the
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: full flush of summer, life on the Sussex Downs goes
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: temporately a land where it is always pleasant afternoon, a
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: haven of quiet breezes and flowing purple cloud, shadows of
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: unending lark song, and the soft thunderousnout from distant browsing
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: sheep and windless autumn mornings bring rarer enchantments still to
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: these southern highlands, washed in the sweet salt breath of
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: the sea. The river mists are abroad in the valley,
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: long clinging folds of white, creeping stealthily round the foot
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: of every hill. Upon the downs, only a soft haze
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: fills the air like a silken trammelnet, garnering the pallid
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: sunshine and bringing the face sky down within an arm
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: stretch of the dewy turf Beneath against the light, the
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: grass seems thickly paved with glistening water drops. If we
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: stride through, the long bentce throws a shower of dew
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: bells rustling and tinkling on the path ahead. As you
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: go forward, a glittering halo hems you in. You walk
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: on silver beaded gossamer that breaks into a thousand iridescent
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: colors under the tread. In an hour, the sun will
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: have drained dry this brimming chalice of the morning. The
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: gold will come back to the sunbeams, and the blue
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: to the sky, and the freed air will gather the
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: songsters once more out of the remotest emerald of the hills.
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: But for once all sound is gone in the muffling vapors,
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: all color loss under the shrouding silverfoil of autumn dew.
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: It is a white world now, and a silent world,
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: mute of music, save for one quiet voice, ineffably sweet
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: and far away and solitary, scarce more discernible than two
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: eyes are stars in the midday blue end of chapter four,
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: chapter five of An Idler in the Wilds by Tickner Edwards.
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. A woodland pessimist,
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: it was summer down in the meadow, and summer on
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: the winding path that led to the wood. Sitting here
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: at the foot of the great beech tree, you might
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: have said that the season was at its berry zenith
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: of glory. So dense was the leaf canopy above you,
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: so rich and gay, the flash of the sunbeams on
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: the old leaf carpet under foot. Up there in the sunshine,
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: the living leaves frolicked against the blue, and their dancing
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: shadows fell on the dead brown leaves below, giving them
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: a subtle illusion of movement. Everywhere beneath the verdant arches
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: of the wood, the thick leaf carpeting seemed to rise
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: and fall, as though the breeze blew under it and
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: was lifting it softly, indolently, as waves lift on an
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: ebbing summer sea. When the cushat flew out of the
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: topmost branch of the beech tree with his noisy clatter
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: of wings, and bore away over the sunny meadow. He
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: went as he had done a thousand times before in
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: sultry days of June, just the same leisurely swing through
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: the same blue air and sunshine, the same veering, purposeless flight,
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: looking about him as he went, as though the meadow
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: sweet still gloomed under the hedgerow, and the mayberries were
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: yet green in their rustling tangle of thorns, And the
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: little hedge chanter sang on in the lane below, as
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: garrulously as ever the calendar told of autumn day's begun,
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: But his was no song of sare October. Brief and
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: chatty and mildly bright, it seemed to chime in with
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: the gold and green of the morning, more like a
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: welcome song for advancing summer than the last gay notes
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: of a season. Pasted its time listening to his winsome
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: music and the soft sowing of the wind overhead, watching
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: the play of the sunbeams to and fro over the
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: moist brown earth, over the nodding heads of cranesbill or
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: the pinker for their dim environment, over the fringe of
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: yellow hawkweed a glow on the brink of the wood.
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: The clock of the year seemed to have turned back
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: half its shining circle. Summer seemed to tread as valiantly
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: through glowing wood and crimson garlanded meadow as ever it
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: had done in by gone hours of June. The ring
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: dove had ceased its crooning song high up in the
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: dim wood labyrinth, and was gone to the plowland over
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: the hill. And now the little hedge chanter stup short
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: in his homely melody and scurried away into the dense
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: hazel cover. The reason of his sudden silence and still
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: hastier flight was soon apparent. A quick rustling sound spread
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: through the thicket, and where a long green bramble spray
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: arched over the path, a robin crept out to warm
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: himself in a golden loop of sunshine that swung to
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: the woodland floor. He halted midway down the bramble branch
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: and looked vigilantly about him. Strangely odd and strangely old,
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: he appeared in his faded red gorget and shabby cloak
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: of brown as he glanced keenly from side to side,
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: feigning not to mark the human intruder on his solitude.
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: His mere coming had driven the small feathered interloper precipitately away,
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: But this other exhibited no terror of him, and no
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: disposition to stir. From his mossy seat, The red eerramite
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: hopped down to the ground and back to his well
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: worn perch, Again, visibly annoyed at the unmannerly observer's scrutiny,
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: he waited a little, still, hoping that he would be
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: gone at length. He turned the unwelcome guest, a chilly
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: shoulder of dun brown feathers, and still keeping up his
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: pretense of ignorance at his presence, looked abstractedly away. The
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: wind went on with its summer song in the treetops.
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: Out on the sun flooded meadows. The swallows lanced to
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: and fro with their steel blue sheen. A thrush piped
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: in the far off holly. Every moment a lark swept
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: up from the oat stubble near at hand to join
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: in the silver ripple of music above. In the blue,
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: soft west, wind and murmuring leaves, glad light and tireless
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: singers all joined in the once sworn brotherhood of make believe.
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: Against the calender's relentless story of the waning days. But
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: the red Breast harbored no such fine fatuities. He was
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: the consistent wooer of truth, and loved her seemingly when
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: least agreeable, Moping there in his single beam of sunlight,
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: when the whole bright morning was at his beck and call.
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: He had cleared the thicket around him of less conscientious musicians,
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: but himself remained and indubious silence, mistrusting the common initiative
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: to be merry, lacking the conviction to be entirely wise.
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: At length, his pessimistic mood seemed to grow too burdensome
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: for purely mental vision. Soliloquy became to him an obvious necessity.
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: Flirting his wings a little, in shrugging concession to this
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: new need, he tried over a bar or two of
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: his most plaintive strain. It was noncommittal, merely a staid
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: reflection on the inconsequence of life in general. But the
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: art of it was manifest, clear and low. It rang
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: through the wood and riveted attention instantly, and now no
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: longer spurning chance companionship, the little robin iermat turned him
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 1: about and seemed to pour out his quaint recitative directly
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: for his human hearer. At first, the song came in brief,
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: disjointed phrases, with ruminative pauses in between. You have had
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: or full of summer? It seemed to say, Why seek
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: to hold back a wearied guest? See he has worn
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: out his gala finery long ago. Why cling to his
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: sorry rags of gold and purple and vex him with
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 1: your importunity. Surely he will go, and no less swiftly
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: for all your pains. The song changed from its quiet,
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 1: reflective measure to a sudden declamatory strain. What is there
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: in all this lusty heat and brawling color to wish forever?
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: The earth is sick of the sunshine and longs for
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: her winter rest, And winter is already here. You cannot
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: see her yet, but along every hedgerow, if you will
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: but listen, you can hear the sweep of her robe,
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: the through through of her sad black drapery, with the
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: clink of the icicles in its train. When June roses
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: were that was the time for singing. But all this
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: hectic flare of scarlet berry, what is it but rouge
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: daubed on a wrinkled, worn out face, the voice stopped
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: out in the sunshine. The west wind traveled the whole
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: gay round of the meadow with a blither note than ever.
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 1: The gibe stung the robin into his loftiest sternness, rhetoric,
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: fair face, and hollow heart. That is your summer that
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: lingers past its time, harked to the wind. Now the
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: old silken courtier tiptoeing through the bushes lest he should
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: shake down the glittering gewgaw's unawares. To day he went
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: to meet the lifting sun, all rosy smiles and soft caresses,
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: a thousand diamonds sparkled on his sandals, his glib unthinking
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: crew of roisterers caroling at his heels. But to morrow
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: he will have thrown down the smiling mask. He will
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: come raging up with the sunshine and drive it all
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: day long before him. His thunder will be in every
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: tree top, and his wild wolf's snarl on every hill.
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: He will drown the world with his angry weeping. And
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: then you will see all the crimson trumpery pelting into
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: the sodden meadow grass, and the mummers hiding in frightened silence,
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: under the lashing leaves a swift end then to all
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: their merry, making aye vanity of vanities, and the vainest
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 1: thing of all this trust in a fickle western breeze,
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: the song ceased. The little hermit birds sat awhile in silence,
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: thoughtfully preening his wings. When he began again, all the
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: fire and fervor had gone from his music. It had
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: been too venturoserm, a flight for one small singer, and
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 1: he of great art, but poor conviction. He harked back
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: now to his old safe, sad boys, dubious strain, hark
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: to the revelers. Now they know nothing, yet they go
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 1: on singing. And after all, who can say, tis but
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 1: a fool's heart that is ever rejoicing. Yet wisdom has
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: not always sorrow for yokefellow, the bird's heart of a season,
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: the heart of a man. Through threescore years and ten,
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: it is all the same, a day, a year, a lifetime.
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 1: Where is the difference? Each has its glamour of dawn,
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: its ripe rich noon, its somber setting. The night follows day,
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 1: the winter follow summer, and death follows life, And one
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: common darkness is the visible end of each He made
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: a tulling pause, and then, in melodious afterthought, the compromise. Yet,
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: who shall say of a truth? The day's return, the
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: summer blossoms shine again, and why not a second dawn
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 1: for all the three? The quivering bell like stanzas died away.
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: The wind had freshened. Now high above where the green
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 1: beech branches flaunted against the blue, it was stirring with
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 1: a louder, freer note. And down through the emerald dusk,
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: with leisurely glide and many hesitating spirals, came fulfillment of
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 1: the robins turnful warning, the first new autumn leaf turning, pirouetting,
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 1: yet ever downwards through the green silence. At last it
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 1: fell to earth and rested there a shining brown gold
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: fleck of light on the old dune carpeting of last
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 1: year's leaves. Here was confirmation of the robin's winter prophecy,
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 1: but he did not see it. The bramble branch was
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: slowly waving to and fro in its golden scheme of sunshine,
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 1: but the perch was empty. The red anchorite was gone
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 1: to his cell for noontide meditation, and already the little
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 1: hedge chanter was back in the thicket, singing his old
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 1: undaunted song of summer days. End of chapter five, Chapter
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: six of An Idler in the Wilds by Edwards. This
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 1: LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Red November, the
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 1: south wind fills the autumn blue with flecks of cloud,
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 1: soft evanescent forms, forever changing and dissolving under the dual
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 1: touch of sun and breeze. Now and again, a wisp
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: of white cyrus strays over the face of the sun
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: and dims its glory for a moment, But the gray
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: shadow soon journeys by. The yellow sunlight comes racing back
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: over the meadow, and the smoldering woods burst once more
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 1: into flame of amber and russet and gold. On upland
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 1: and lowland, the autumn morning rocks and sways and glitters again,
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: as blithely as bewilderingly as ever that as yet the
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 1: red ruin of wood and forest, the menace of winter
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 1: in falling leaf and stripping branches, is only for the
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: highlands and the wind swept slopes. Here by the river Scarce,
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: a sign of the failing season shows among the green
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: Forget the burning warning light on distant hills. Look only
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 1: at the swaying labyrinth of reed tops, the untarnished green
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: of riverside, oak and ash, the leafy tangle of underwood.
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: And it might be the August sunshine that lies like
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: cloth of gold on the dreaming waters, and lights up
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: the vivid blue of the kingfisher as he hurtles by
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: to his fishing ground beyond the weir out on the upland.
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: For all its warmth and cheery touch, the wind has
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 1: the searching, tingling quality of autumn in every breath here
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 1: by the river, Its rollicking power is all but gone.
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 1: Its voice is only an undertone, a wayward song in
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: the treetops, half hushed in the deeper song from the
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 1: river bed. The tide has turned strong and steady and sure.
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 1: The brimming waters sweep by under their paving of sun gold,
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 1: every ripple bearing its burden of fallen leaves, down to
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 1: the far off sea. While the tide held the illusion
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 1: of summer was almost complete above the gay deceit of
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 1: the sunshine, the rich, unsullied verdure of the trees, the
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 1: blue of the sky as full of lark song as
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 1: any morning in June. Below the tangle of brier at
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 1: the water's edge, hid all but the green summits of
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 1: the quivering reeds, trailing their fingertips in the flood. The
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 1: drooping oak branches made cool brown shadows on the gold,
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 1: where the blackbirds came to drink as thirstily as ever.
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 1: The gossamer gnats drifted by in the gentle air nets
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: that caught the sunbeams and bore them gleaming into every
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 1: shadowy nook beneath the trees, and every bush was outlined
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 1: with a haze of light on countless insect wings. If
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 1: a nightingale had trilled in the dense cover yonder, it
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 1: would not have come and meatily. So bright, so mild
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 1: was the generous autumn day. But the tide has turned
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 1: at last. The leaves, the telltale leaves, go hurrying by
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 1: on the descending waters, and in a moment, the gay
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 1: conspiracy of the sunshine is betrayed through the treeless plains.
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 1: The tide came up, bearing only the sunbeams, and the
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 1: azure mirrored on its bosom, an inverted picture of the
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 1: upper skies, all the fairer for the ripple and stir
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 1: of life it drew from the river bed. But now
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 1: the sun's bright tenancy is done, the mirror is broken
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 1: from bank to bank. The returning stream is dark with
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 1: the fallen leaves gathered from a thousand upland woods that
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 1: wrestle ceaselessly in the grip of the unruly wind, rich
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 1: yellow from the elms and red from the beaches, and
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 1: slender flecks of willow gold, all whirling by in a gleaming,
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 1: sodden company and tulling the tale of the unavailing light
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 1: and ever shortening days. The tide falls slowly, the gray
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 1: reed stems lift out of their diminishing waters. Now the
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 1: sunken snag in mid stream begins to rear its weed
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 1: crowned head, and the leaves gather behind it in a
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 1: dense pack of glistening color, and a wedge shaped space
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 1: of open water shows in front, where the sunshine plants
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 1: an instant golden footing. The Kingfisher is back again on
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 1: the willow branch that overhangs the stream like a great
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 1: glittering dewdrop. He sits in the full light of the sun,
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 1: mutually watching the speeding river below him, his brilliant colors
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 1: flashing now blue, now green, now orange red. As he
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 1: turns himself curiously from side to side. These are his
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 1: halcyon days, these flighting, bright pauses in the debarkle of autumn.
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 1: South wind and a southern sun have repeopled the waters
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 1: for him. Yesterday the north wind cried like a frightened
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 1: child in the tree tops against a dreary, leaden sky,
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 1: and the river swept sullenly onward, void of all life
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 1: but the ceaseless spray that drove before it under the
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 1: lash of the blast. But to day the soft austral
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 1: wind has return'd the gold and the turquoise are back
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 1: on the waters. The kingfisher is out again, searching his
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 1: favorite pool under the trailing willow fronds. Silently he sits
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 1: and scans the hurrying stream. The faintest rustle in the bushes,
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 1: or crack of dry twig under foot, and he will
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: be off with the speed of an arrow, uttering his
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 1: shrill defiant note as he flies. But as yet he
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 1: has no cognisance of an enemy. The leaf strewn waters
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 1: journey on, every clear break in the spangled tide receives
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 1: his vigilant scrutiny. At last, when the eye is dazed
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 1: with watching his charging brilliance, he stoops and plunges straight
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 1: down like a fallen stone. In a moment, his glittering
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 1: armory is gone. The clear, ringing note of the plunge
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 1: sends a blackbird out of the thicket behind you, screaming
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 1: an alarm to all the hills. A ring of ripples
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 1: forms on the water, spreads and dies away. A moment more,
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 1: the gleaming emerald of the helcion shows again, with a
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 1: burst and a spatter of diamond drops. He is on
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 1: the wing once more, all his bright colors gaily flaunting.
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 1: As he speeds back to his old station on the
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 1: willow tree. You have just time to note the glittering,
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 1: writhing minnow held caterways in his spearlike bill. Then, with
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 1: one gulp, his preys down his azure throttle. He is
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 1: sitting in the sunshine again, as quietly, as alertly as ever,
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 1: watching the depths for the gliding silver treasure he loves
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 1: so well. Unceasingly, the south wind drives its flock across
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 1: the field of bloe oo. The white cloud trellis thickens
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 1: now swiftly coming and going. The yellow bands of sunshine
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 1: spread over the glowing hills. In the track of the light.
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 1: The colours seem to leap and subside, and break into
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 1: long crests of foam like waves on a contending sea.
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 1: The tide droops lower and lower. The waters are all
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 1: but hidden, now deep in their whispering wilderness of reeds.
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 1: The wind in the treetops has a wilder, freer note,
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 1: and now a wandering gust drives down the open stream,
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 1: and the sweeter sound in all the long year's river music,
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 1: the sound of the falling acorns strikes upon the ear
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 1: wherever the oak woods grow to the water's edge. This
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 1: peer a symphony comes with the earliest breezes of November.
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 1: In the upper woods. Today, hardly an acorn remains aloft
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 1: in its green cup. All have long ago been flung
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 1: to earth or carried off by the black battalions from
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 1: the rookery. But the riverside oaks go to their winter
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 1: sleep with a more leisurely tread. The sudden floor of
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 1: wind has shaken them, passed on and died away. And
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 1: now the acorns, half loosened in their green setting, begin
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 1: their serenade. One by one they fall and strike the
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 1: water far and near with a deep bell like note.
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 1: At first, it is a measured chime, rich and slow,
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 1: filling the silence with its lingering melody. But soon the
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 1: wind stirs again overhead, and the meter quickens. Now the
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 1: river is like a harp with a thousand quivering strings.
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 1: Deep chords peel out on the nearest waters, and softer,
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 1: deeper echoes answer far away, Bright, rippling our peggios begin
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 1: on the remotest reaches, pass swiftly, tumultuously by, and fade
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 1: away on the distant brink of the wood. Hardly a
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 1: note is missing in the scale. As the acorns fall
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 1: on the resonant waters in twos and threes, in whole,
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 1: scattering handfuls at the will of the inconstant breeze. It
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 1: is the last living music of the woods, this acorn
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 1: song in red November. But it is a joy song,
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 1: bringing a joyous year to its golden closing. The old
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 1: poets sang of melancholy autumn. One by one they go
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 1: by in their velvet trunk hose, their periwigs and patches,
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 1: their stocks and high shouldered coats and silver shoe buckles,
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 1: all chanting the same dirge, like antiphon of a moribund season,
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 1: a sorrowful, dying year November and its hangdog name for
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 1: melancholy haunts their lines with an obsession of death, drawn
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 1: figures and lugubrious phrases. But whether the times have changed
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 1: or the old poetry were a false convention, there is
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 1: little of sadness in the autumn of today. For every
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 1: leaf that falls, a new one is already in the making.
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 1: The hillside copse of hazel, stripped of its last leaves,
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 1: now is purple, with its promise for next year's greenery.
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 1: Already the chestnuts have a myriad sappy buds that glisten
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 1: in the sunshine. As the wind rocks their bare branches
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 1: to and fro. Nothing pauses, nothing looks backward. Everything changes
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 1: all but the river, through all the swift race of
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 1: growth and leaf and flower, through full maturity and red
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 1: decline and russet death, until underfoot the dry leaves crackle
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 1: once more, and the only music above is the whistling
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 1: song of empty branches. The river keeps on its eternal way,
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 1: the one immutable thing in a world that is change
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 1: upon change forever. End of chapter six, chapter seven of
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 1: An Idler in the Wilds by Tickner Edwards. This LibriVox
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 1: recording is in the public domain. A jay hunt. The
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 1: wind is a restless, upbraiding thing in the crest of
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 1: pines upon the hill. Here in the valley where the
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 1: jays are calling, deep down in the eternal woodland twilight,
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 1: the frosty air is all but motionless. Overhead, the termagant
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 1: northwest gale careers from hilltop to hilltop, taking the mile
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 1: of lowering gray sky between in one vociferous stride. Yet
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 1: in the wood below, for the far off clamor of
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 1: the jays, a strange, dull silence lingers everywhere. The only
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 1: sound that breaks the stillness is the whispering echo of
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 1: your footfall, as wigdhing ankle high in the crisp brown leaves.
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 1: Each step bears you farther and farther down into the
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 1: misty woodland deep. Who would track the blue japie to
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 1: his winter layer had need of all his forest craft
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 1: and all his patients. A robber and an outlaw, both
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 1: by heritage and inclination, the jay views with keen distrust
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 1: every human infraction of his solitude. Come as stealthily as
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 1: you will, His vigilant eye is sure to mark you down.
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 1: The harsh, intermittent note you have been following through the
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 1: green gloom of the beech trunks changes suddenly to a deep,
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 1: insistent warning than as swiftly dies away. He is up
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 1: and off through the bickering treetops with that headlong, clumsy
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 1: flight of his, yet at a pace that will bear him,
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 1: in a moment far out of the zone of any danger.
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 1: But today better fortune may be in store. Past disappointments
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 1: have breden you some of the jay's own wary wisdom.
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 1: Instead of creeping in upon him, where first his loud,
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 1: strident voice broke upon the ear, you have made a
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 1: wide detour and entered the lee side of the wood. Moreover,
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 1: this time other conditions are in your favor. The shrill
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 1: note of the wind on the hilltop has masked your approach,
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 1: and the clinging ground renders a wide survey, impossible even
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 1: to the jay's far seeing eyes. Above all, by great
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 1: good chance you have reached his favorite hunting ground, well
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 1: in advance of him. Here, where a few ancient oaks
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 1: stand in the midst of the beech wood, with the
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 1: close set hollies crowding in between. He built his nest
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 1: in earliest days of May, crouching down in the thick
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 1: cover now to wait for him, You can just make
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 1: out its dark, irregular bulk through the green glimmer overhead.
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 1: Acorns in plenty lie hidden under the fallen leaves. And
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 1: acorns are the jay's principle and often his only winter sustenance.
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 1: Hither he is sure to come sooner or later, if
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 1: only your patients advise his loitery mood. The dense holly
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 1: clump standing in the avenue between the trees has netted
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 1: the leaves as they gamboled by on past autumn winds,
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 1: and heap them up into a natural couch amidst the
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 1: dry stems of break fern. Settling comfortably down in your
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 1: shadowy nook under the hollies, the minutes creep by, and
• 1:32:26
  Speaker 1: the hush around you grows more profound than ever. With
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 1: the cessation of your rustling footsteps, the last sound of
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 1: life seems to have died away from the wood. Far
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 1: above on the hilltop, the wind keeps up its sorrowful refrain, sighing, lamenting, beseeching, threatening.
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 1: In turn, its shrill voice comes down to you now
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 1: with a strangely human quality. Sometimes, the swift air torrent
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 1: overhead stoops and catches the highest branches in its flow.
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 1: A sudden volley of sound breaks forth. The tree tops
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 1: lash to and fro, the supple beach ones sway and
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 1: tremble to their moss clad roots. A little vortex of
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 1: leaves comes eddying down into the still twilight, each twirling
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 1: speck of red, glowing like a kindled torch in the
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 1: misty gloom as it slowly settles among its fellows long
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 1: since fallen to earth. Then the wind passes, the silence
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 1: comes again. The mazy pattern work of branches overhead lies
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 1: against the drab sky, sharp cut and motionless as ever.
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 1: Thus the minutes drag slowly by. The harsh sonorous note
• 1:33:59
  Speaker 1: far down in the alley has never ceased, but as
• 1:34:02
  Speaker 1: yet it has come no nearer. Listening watching from your
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 1: dem ambush, an hour has journeyed on, and you begin
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 1: to fear that once more disappointment is in train for you.
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 1: When suddenly the well known cry peels out, this time startlingly,
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 1: close and clear. Again, and again it vibrates through the
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 1: dim air, and then at last you see him swinging
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 1: boldly along through the green aisles of the wood, looking
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 1: in the dull light as red as the new cast
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 1: foliage around you, and slanting to earth, just as did
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 1: the reluctant leaves a moment back under the stress of
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 1: the domineering wind. Silently cautiously, you keep your glance upon him.
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 1: He passes, turns, and swoops downward, never stopping his rich,
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 1: husky monotone the while. You catch the glint of turquoise
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 1: on his wings, and the ruddy glow of his whole
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 1: plumage as he skims the leafy forest floor. Not an
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 1: arms stretch away and up again into the dark arabesque
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 1: of branches, calling incessantly as he goes, and then rarest
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 1: chance of all. For one brief moment he perches, and
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 1: all his fine, extravagant beauty stands revealed quiescent against the
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 1: somber plane of lowering winter sky to view the jay.
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 1: Thus himself, unconscious of your presence, in his native fastness,
• 1:35:53
  Speaker 1: is to realize once and for all time the true
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 1: spirit of wild woodland life. Persecuted more relentlessly and indeed
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 1: with better cause than almost any other feathered thing, he
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 1: yet preserves through it all a strength of individuality and
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 1: daring unique among his kind. He has accepted long ago
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 1: all the perils and the prerogatives of the situation thrust
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 1: upon him. He is the frank, incorrigible brigand every man's
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 1: hand against him. All his crafty, vigilance and cunning leagued
• 1:36:37
  Speaker 1: against mankind. And yet Robin Hood of old never played
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 1: the part of the romantic thief more gallantly than this
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 1: hereditary corsair of the wood. There is nothing of the
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 1: courage pilferer about his methods. Wherever he goes, he flaunts
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 1: his colours undisguise, uttering his war cry boldly to hill
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 1: and dale as he speeds on his errand of repine.
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 1: These are hard times for him now, when the december
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 1: frost locks up the earth in its iron casket, and
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 1: nothing stays above ground that can burrow into the warmth
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 1: below acorns there are still and buries on holly and brier.
• 1:37:28
  Speaker 1: But such lean, precarious diet goes ill with his luxurious
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 1: temperament in the spring, as every keeper knows, to his cost,
• 1:37:39
  Speaker 1: the jay takes his fell of more generous fare. You
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 1: cannot acquit him of the charge of covert robbing, nor
• 1:37:48
  Speaker 1: deny that he raids village, gardens and orchards. Whenever the
• 1:37:52
  Speaker 1: mood besets him, but at least he comes in broad day,
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 1: sounding his battle cry from afar, and dares the danger
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 1: for the prize. Like the gentleman thief, he knows himself
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 1: to be. Almost the whole year through the cry of
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 1: the jay is heard in wood and covert, but at
• 1:38:15
  Speaker 1: one short season he is strangely silent. And nothing illustrates
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 1: the jays in born wiliness more than this, When his
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 1: mate is sitting on her nest of gray, green, freckled
• 1:38:29
  Speaker 1: eggs up there in the crutch of the holly bough,
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 1: and the old resource of flight against peril is for
• 1:38:36
  Speaker 1: the moment unavailing. He assiduously holds his peace. He knows
• 1:38:43
  Speaker 1: his reticence is the only chance now of safety for
• 1:38:46
  Speaker 1: the coming brood. And all through this anxious time of incubation,
• 1:38:51
  Speaker 1: until the young are fledged, the jay and his mate
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 1: go to and fro in almost utter silence. And then
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 1: at last, one morning in early July, he raises again
• 1:39:05
  Speaker 1: the old defiant clamor and leads his noisy family away
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 1: up into the green security of the forest heights. Watching
• 1:39:16
  Speaker 1: him now as he sits on the like and oak
• 1:39:19
  Speaker 1: branch in the fading winter light, you marvel at the
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 1: restless energy and vigilance that possesses him. He is never
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 1: still for a moment. Crest and tail are constantly erected.
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 1: His keen glance flashes from side to side. He is
• 1:39:39
  Speaker 1: for ever turning this way and that, keeping his whole
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 1: environment under ceaseless scrutiny. Lie as still as you may
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 1: in your shady nook. You cannot hope to escape his
• 1:39:52
  Speaker 1: wariness for long. And now, as he flits down among
• 1:39:57
  Speaker 1: the fallen leaves to hunt for acre, he begins a low,
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 1: monotonous girding note. Plainly something has occurred to waken his suspicions.
• 1:40:10
  Speaker 1: Suddenly he stopped short in his busy scrabbling. Before you
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 1: have time to realize your detection, he is gone through
• 1:40:20
  Speaker 1: the maze of beech trunks, filling the wood with his
• 1:40:23
  Speaker 1: harsh screaming. As he flies, the deep note dies away.
• 1:40:30
  Speaker 1: Your jay hunt is over, and now it is homeward
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 1: through the reddening sunset light. While you have been waiting
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 1: under the dense holly cover. The brief winter's afternoon has faded,
• 1:40:45
  Speaker 1: and with it the complaining violence of the blast in
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 1: the fringe of pinewood on the hill. One soft, low
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 1: voice remains like a faint far echo of the day's
• 1:40:58
  Speaker 1: windy strive. Overhead, the sky is clearing. There is a
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 1: frosty glitter of stars to the eastward, where the blue
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 1: darkness is hurrying over the woodtop. Hardly will you gain
• 1:41:14
  Speaker 1: the road to the distant village before the green and
• 1:41:18
  Speaker 1: drab of the beechwood changes into the black silence of
• 1:41:23
  Speaker 1: the winter night. End of chapter seven Chapter eight of
• 1:41:35
  Speaker 1: An Idler in the Wilds by Tickner Edwards. This LibriVox
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 1: recording is in the public domain. When the light is low,
• 1:41:48
  Speaker 1: the peawit cries over the meadow, a wan despairing cry
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 1: as of some famish storm tortured thing, and the lark
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 1: bursts up from the meadow grass up into the gray
• 1:42:02
  Speaker 1: desolation of sky and the rollicking southwest wind, filling the
• 1:42:07
  Speaker 1: morning with his joyous song. The weird despondent note and
• 1:42:13
  Speaker 1: the bright trilling refrain mingle together strangely in the air,
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 1: the peewit flitting to and fro in his sad, inglorious way,
• 1:42:24
  Speaker 1: still hugging the leaves of winter fondly to him, and
• 1:42:29
  Speaker 1: the gray speckled lark fresh from the new sprouting green
• 1:42:34
  Speaker 1: carrying his blithe message of the year's awakening up into
• 1:42:39
  Speaker 1: the sad hued heaven and reveling in the warm, rough
• 1:42:43
  Speaker 1: caress of the breeze. His is but a short song,
• 1:42:48
  Speaker 1: still a sudden swoop upward, head to the blast, his
• 1:42:53
  Speaker 1: feathers blown all awry as he goes, and one steady
• 1:42:58
  Speaker 1: circle of music, then silence as he drops like a
• 1:43:03
  Speaker 1: falling stone down once more into the sheltering bents. But
• 1:43:08
  Speaker 1: without an instant's pause, another takes up the glad refrain,
• 1:43:14
  Speaker 1: and after him, one more, and still another, until the
• 1:43:18
  Speaker 1: merry ketch song has traveled the whole dim round of
• 1:43:22
  Speaker 1: Greening hillside, and the first singer is ready to take
• 1:43:26
  Speaker 1: his place again in the bright, interminable melody. But the
• 1:43:32
  Speaker 1: peawet keeps on with his winter dirge, as despairfully as ever,
• 1:43:39
  Speaker 1: to and fro under the gray half light he speeds,
• 1:43:43
  Speaker 1: a restless, wearisome, solitary thing. The gloom of the sky,
• 1:43:49
  Speaker 1: the resounding violence of the wind, black bear treetops and
• 1:43:53
  Speaker 1: whistling hedgerows. He finds nothing but hopeless menace of winter
• 1:43:59
  Speaker 1: everywhere in the new plowed land, beyond the hazels. His
• 1:44:04
  Speaker 1: grim conspirators and adversity are delving a sullen inharmonious crew.
• 1:44:12
  Speaker 1: Looking through the purple mazeer branches, the flock makes a
• 1:44:16
  Speaker 1: darker stain on the rich, deep vandyke of the fresh
• 1:44:20
  Speaker 1: turned earth. A churlish silence is over them as they work,
• 1:44:26
  Speaker 1: save when one rises and wanders to a new station,
• 1:44:30
  Speaker 1: father afield rending the shrill blast with his shriller calling.
• 1:44:36
  Speaker 1: But a shout or a clap of the hand will
• 1:44:40
  Speaker 1: start the whole mute brotherhood into clamorous flight. Rising with
• 1:44:46
  Speaker 1: one accord, they sweep upward, showing intensely black against the
• 1:44:52
  Speaker 1: hurrying gray of the sky. As they pass over against
• 1:44:57
  Speaker 1: the distant line of elmward their white the plumage glows
• 1:45:01
  Speaker 1: out like a hundred twinkling eyes, but the wind buffets
• 1:45:07
  Speaker 1: them too mercilessly. Soon they settle once more into their
• 1:45:12
  Speaker 1: old haven of brown furrows. The wild keening dies down
• 1:45:18
  Speaker 1: again into the single oft reiterated note. On these days
• 1:45:24
  Speaker 1: of never ending gloom, when the southwest wind, warm and blustrous,
• 1:45:30
  Speaker 1: drives by the whole day long with all its somber
• 1:45:34
  Speaker 1: cloud sail set, when the night never really forsakes the wood,
• 1:45:40
  Speaker 1: and midday in the open fields is but a lesser twilight.
• 1:45:45
  Speaker 1: The eye unconsciously seizes and dwells upon every speck of
• 1:45:49
  Speaker 1: color that may serve to leaven the universal gray. While
• 1:45:55
  Speaker 1: the sun shone in the clear, frostbound weather, the glance
• 1:46:00
  Speaker 1: surfeited with brilliant hues, the rainbow, sparkle of the hoarfrost,
• 1:46:06
  Speaker 1: green and gold of shimmering far off woodlands. The measureless
• 1:46:11
  Speaker 1: formless azure overhead. But to day these conditions are sharply overthrown.
• 1:46:18
  Speaker 1: It is as if the warm southwest gale had blotted
• 1:46:22
  Speaker 1: out every vestige of color from sky and trees alike.
• 1:46:28
  Speaker 1: To look upward now is to grow giddy with the
• 1:46:31
  Speaker 1: ceaseless race of cloud forms streaming by overhead, moving towers
• 1:46:37
  Speaker 1: of darkness, tumbling and swaying onward, each more ominously black
• 1:46:43
  Speaker 1: than its fellows. The fringe of oak that borders the
• 1:46:48
  Speaker 1: meadow not a hundred paces off has lost its bright
• 1:46:52
  Speaker 1: garnature of moss and lichen, and shows against the sky
• 1:46:57
  Speaker 1: like a filagree of jet. The distant woods are lairs
• 1:47:02
  Speaker 1: of impenetrable gloom, where the night still slumbers. It is
• 1:47:08
  Speaker 1: as though the deep, voiced, minatory gale were charged to
• 1:47:12
  Speaker 1: the zenith with some swart pigment, changing everything it touched
• 1:47:18
  Speaker 1: into its own Simerian hue, looking out through the hazels,
• 1:47:24
  Speaker 1: upward and onward. At all this cheerless monotone, the shrill
• 1:47:29
  Speaker 1: cry of the peawet seems to focus the desolation. It
• 1:47:34
  Speaker 1: is the black sky and blacker woodlands translated into wailing,
• 1:47:40
  Speaker 1: drear voiced sound. But now the lark is up again
• 1:47:45
  Speaker 1: in the joyless heaven with a merrier peal than ever.
• 1:47:50
  Speaker 1: The sudden burst of song is almost startling in its
• 1:47:53
  Speaker 1: apparent incongruity, until the glance, tired of the scurrying chaos
• 1:48:00
  Speaker 1: soberhead that is always changing yet unendingly the same drops
• 1:48:06
  Speaker 1: to earth when the brief rippling melody falls and fails,
• 1:48:11
  Speaker 1: and then the secret of the day is suddenly revealed
• 1:48:15
  Speaker 1: to you. It is all a study in contrasts, the
• 1:48:20
  Speaker 1: sad song and the glad song, the restless wrath of
• 1:48:24
  Speaker 1: the sky and the warm winged, urging gale instinct with
• 1:48:30
  Speaker 1: its vivid growth and life, the somber masses of woodland,
• 1:48:35
  Speaker 1: and the fair green cover lid of sprouting corn laid
• 1:48:39
  Speaker 1: over the hill, purged of its old gross feeling for color.
• 1:48:44
  Speaker 1: By long gazing upward, as the subtle painter of the
• 1:48:48
  Speaker 1: seasons willed it should, the eye comes down to the rich,
• 1:48:52
  Speaker 1: quiet shades of the earth itself, as to a bridal feast.
• 1:48:58
  Speaker 1: It is all one to the mel and collie plover.
• 1:49:01
  Speaker 1: When the roof of the world is dark and the
• 1:49:04
  Speaker 1: black wind cries over the land, he sees only present
• 1:49:10
  Speaker 1: calamity of gloom. But the lark looks out into bright futurity.
• 1:49:17
  Speaker 1: Now at last you learn why he was so merry
• 1:49:20
  Speaker 1: in the face of seeming adversity. In the lowly furrow,
• 1:49:25
  Speaker 1: where he shelters between his blithe volleys of music, all
• 1:49:30
  Speaker 1: is aglow with dim, quiet color, teeming with the young
• 1:49:35
  Speaker 1: year's rich renewal of life. New grass builds the old
• 1:49:40
  Speaker 1: dry tussocks with its tender sheen between the weather worn
• 1:49:45
  Speaker 1: clods of the fallow blue Veronica is springing rosy tufts
• 1:49:51
  Speaker 1: of dead nettle hide. Beneath every ridge, under the sheltering hazels,
• 1:49:57
  Speaker 1: a thousand shapes of green growth ruth are forcing upward
• 1:50:01
  Speaker 1: through the dead leaves. And here and there in the
• 1:50:05
  Speaker 1: mazy purple, the first frail catkins have let down their
• 1:50:10
  Speaker 1: ladders of gold green light a little way onward, and
• 1:50:15
  Speaker 1: the gray gloom that the peewit loves blots out all
• 1:50:19
  Speaker 1: colour again. Yet the very spirit of spring breathes in
• 1:50:25
  Speaker 1: the larks, aerial music, abating the joylessness of the heaven,
• 1:50:31
  Speaker 1: just as winter stars bring their own triumphant compensation for
• 1:50:35
  Speaker 1: the pale, deathlike stillness of the night. Through the singing,
• 1:50:42
  Speaker 1: surging labyrinth of hazels. The footpath winds over the hillocky plowland,
• 1:50:49
  Speaker 1: where the peewits scatter before you, crying weirdly as they go,
• 1:50:54
  Speaker 1: and down the slope of the hill. Overhead, the sky
• 1:50:59
  Speaker 1: seems more threateningly black than ever, and now under foot
• 1:51:05
  Speaker 1: there is nothing but the dun hues of the fresh
• 1:51:08
  Speaker 1: turned earth itself, working intricately together. The whole year through
• 1:51:15
  Speaker 1: nature and the husbandman rarely leave a corner of the
• 1:51:18
  Speaker 1: fields untenanted by some form of beauty. But on these
• 1:51:24
  Speaker 1: first days following the plow, a real desolation seems to
• 1:51:29
  Speaker 1: have come over everything on all the broad descending sweep
• 1:51:34
  Speaker 1: of hillside, until it dips abruptly and vanishes into the
• 1:51:39
  Speaker 1: misty coom below. Not a green blade, not a single
• 1:51:44
  Speaker 1: blossom of pimpernel or yellow charlock, remains. The ruthless plowshare
• 1:51:50
  Speaker 1: has buried all alike, deep under the sod. Hungrily, the
• 1:51:56
  Speaker 1: eye searches the callow waste for any token of in
• 1:52:01
  Speaker 1: earth and sky. There is nothing now but dreary monotone,
• 1:52:07
  Speaker 1: the bare brown soil underfoot, and above, the whistling one
• 1:52:12
  Speaker 1: voice of the hurricane, with its great dark masses of
• 1:52:16
  Speaker 1: rain cloud driving before it, forever, changing in shape and
• 1:52:21
  Speaker 1: volume as they go. Yet on these dim, resounding January days,
• 1:52:28
  Speaker 1: the unlovely spirit of the plowlands often has one lurid counterpoise.
• 1:52:35
  Speaker 1: The path winds over the last sharp undulation of brown
• 1:52:40
  Speaker 1: furrows and down into the comb. Suddenly the whole scene changes.
• 1:52:47
  Speaker 1: The drab, bare soil is here still, and the owlet
• 1:52:51
  Speaker 1: light a deeper gray than ever. But the old magic
• 1:52:56
  Speaker 1: touch of contrast is back again in the picture. Once more,
• 1:53:02
  Speaker 1: Color and joyous sound and quick tense movement wanton together everywhere.
• 1:53:09
  Speaker 1: A dozen fires are gleaming in the vast expanse of
• 1:53:12
  Speaker 1: the field, each with its long blue ribbond of smoke
• 1:53:17
  Speaker 1: stretching away like molten turquoise. On the gale, jingling harrows
• 1:53:23
  Speaker 1: hurry to and fro with their merry labor notes. A
• 1:53:28
  Speaker 1: score of men and women are at work, busily raking
• 1:53:32
  Speaker 1: the dry weeds together and piling them breast high upon
• 1:53:36
  Speaker 1: the crackling flames. One of the weed burners, young and sturdy,
• 1:53:43
  Speaker 1: tending the biggest fire of all, is singing an old
• 1:53:47
  Speaker 1: Sussex farming song.
• 1:53:49
  Speaker 2: To plow and to sew, and to rip panta mo,
• 1:53:55
  Speaker 2: and bea farmers bore, and be Falma's boy.
• 1:54:07
  Speaker 1: The words of the song, lustily trolled forth in the rich,
• 1:54:11
  Speaker 1: quaint Southern dialect, have a strange familiar ring about them,
• 1:54:16
  Speaker 1: a reckless mirth and jollity, curiously out of keeping with
• 1:54:21
  Speaker 1: the desolate day, and yet full of some reminiscence only
• 1:54:26
  Speaker 1: half defined. Drawing near to watch the leaping, gamboling flames,
• 1:54:33
  Speaker 1: rose red and vivid amber whirling incessantly upward, and the
• 1:54:38
  Speaker 1: merry crimson sparks streaming away on the berserk wind, all
• 1:54:43
  Speaker 1: becomes suddenly clear to you. It is another, and this
• 1:54:48
  Speaker 1: time a human singer. But the spirit, the motive of
• 1:54:54
  Speaker 1: the song is the same as in the one you
• 1:54:57
  Speaker 1: heard up there on the fallow, When the last swept
• 1:55:00
  Speaker 1: up from his bower of blue Veronica, hurling his blythe
• 1:55:05
  Speaker 1: prophetic music in the teeth of the winter blast end
• 1:55:12
  Speaker 1: of chapter eight Chapter nine of An Idler in the
• 1:55:21
  Speaker 1: Wilds by Tickner Edwards. This LibriVox recording is in the
• 1:55:27
  Speaker 1: public domain. The February summer Old Time chroniclers of nature,
• 1:55:35
  Speaker 1: and many of the latter day panegyris of the Mary
• 1:55:39
  Speaker 1: Howard school have familiarized us with at least one delusive
• 1:55:44
  Speaker 1: metaphor in regard to the change of the seasons. The
• 1:55:50
  Speaker 1: life of the year is pictured to us as a
• 1:55:52
  Speaker 1: tide gradually attaining its apogee of growth and color and
• 1:55:58
  Speaker 1: music at midsummer, and as gradually declining to ultimate desolation
• 1:56:04
  Speaker 1: in winter's fell conspiracy of frost and storm. But the
• 1:56:10
  Speaker 1: true country dweller, student of the open air, living his
• 1:56:15
  Speaker 1: life through day by day at the great authentic heart
• 1:56:19
  Speaker 1: of things, has long cast aside a figure which he
• 1:56:23
  Speaker 1: knows to be as trite as it is fallacious. It
• 1:56:28
  Speaker 1: is true that nature never calls her crucible. She is
• 1:56:33
  Speaker 1: forever secretly preparing, steadily HARKing forward to changes as yet
• 1:56:39
  Speaker 1: little evident superficially. But the actual transformation from one season
• 1:56:46
  Speaker 1: to another is instant. The work of one brief day
• 1:56:51
  Speaker 1: often of a single hour with the first frost of
• 1:56:56
  Speaker 1: late September, Summer changes into water at a stroke one
• 1:57:02
  Speaker 1: night of the northern blast, after long still weeks of
• 1:57:06
  Speaker 1: flaming autumn weather, and every branch is bare in wood
• 1:57:11
  Speaker 1: and hedgerow, the hilltop white against a drab, careering sky.
• 1:57:17
  Speaker 1: A rimy sarecloth shrouding everything. At one stride. Winter has
• 1:57:24
  Speaker 1: trodden out the last bright vestige of the dying year
• 1:57:28
  Speaker 1: under its ruthless soloret of steel, and spring makes its
• 1:57:33
  Speaker 1: first breach in the icy winter ramparts with the same
• 1:57:37
  Speaker 1: abrupt inconsequence. For weeks the frost has held still, breathless
• 1:57:45
  Speaker 1: weeks when all the brooks are silent, every sound of
• 1:57:50
  Speaker 1: husbandry gone from the deserted fields, and strange, shy, hunger
• 1:57:56
  Speaker 1: driven birds forsake their immemorial solitude, dudes and haunt the
• 1:58:01
  Speaker 1: village homesteads, disputing with the starlings and the sparrows for
• 1:58:06
  Speaker 1: a crust. Days of impotent sunshine, level and low and colorless,
• 1:58:14
  Speaker 1: with the stealthy gold of evening, but a moment's herald
• 1:58:18
  Speaker 1: of the dark and long nights, when a real deathlike
• 1:58:23
  Speaker 1: silence lars over veil and upland and the very stars
• 1:58:28
  Speaker 1: seem frozen solidly into the black canopy of the sky.
• 1:58:34
  Speaker 1: And then there comes a day in February when it
• 1:58:37
  Speaker 1: is suddenly borne in upon you. That's the pitiless, iron
• 1:58:41
  Speaker 1: bound season has reached its close. At last. The air
• 1:58:47
  Speaker 1: is seemingly as cold and still as ever, though the
• 1:58:50
  Speaker 1: blue gray sky and pallid sunshine are gone. Now a
• 1:58:56
  Speaker 1: white mist hovers everywhere, slowly gathered on twig and branch
• 1:59:02
  Speaker 1: and stem, until all is hidden under the same wraith
• 1:59:06
  Speaker 1: like mystery. But through the phantom air a peal of
• 1:59:11
  Speaker 1: merry thrush music rings out incessantly, far and wide. Little
• 1:59:18
  Speaker 1: red brown wrens are scudding in the dim hedgerow, stopping
• 1:59:22
  Speaker 1: now and then to pour out their slender silver song.
• 1:59:27
  Speaker 1: Robins unseen mark the shadowy thorn, breaks with sudden trills
• 1:59:33
  Speaker 1: and cadences, glad or woeful, just as a changing mood
• 1:59:38
  Speaker 1: besets them high above. A cowing and dowing goes by,
• 1:59:44
  Speaker 1: invisibly faint at first, now waxing loud and clamorous, then
• 1:59:51
  Speaker 1: fading away once more. As the rooks sweep onward to
• 1:59:55
  Speaker 1: the distant upland for a moment, cloud of finches darkens
• 2:00:02
  Speaker 1: the mist about your head, the sound of their wings
• 2:00:06
  Speaker 1: as muffled thunder, their twittering babel, drowning every other note.
• 2:00:13
  Speaker 1: Just for an instant they are here, And then like
• 2:00:18
  Speaker 1: the deep organ music of the rooks, their jingling chorus fils,
• 2:00:24
  Speaker 1: they are gone into the white wonder of the morning,
• 2:00:28
  Speaker 1: And far and near the thrush a song breaks out again,
• 2:00:32
  Speaker 1: more joyously, more insistently than ever, And now high above
• 2:00:39
  Speaker 1: in the invisible woodtop, there comes a strange new note,
• 2:00:44
  Speaker 1: so soft that the ear can hardly detect it, and
• 2:00:49
  Speaker 1: yet indescribably sweet and pure, like an Elian harp. It
• 2:00:56
  Speaker 1: sounds once twice, it dies away, then is back again,
• 2:01:03
  Speaker 1: this time with an import not to be confounded. Poets,
• 2:01:09
  Speaker 1: old and you have sung to us of the voice
• 2:01:12
  Speaker 1: of spring, and we have accepted the idea as a
• 2:01:16
  Speaker 1: pretty motive for rhyming, or at least our willing to
• 2:01:20
  Speaker 1: meet out to it indulgence due to an old acquaintanceship.
• 2:01:26
  Speaker 1: But here, in sober earnest is the very thing the
• 2:01:32
  Speaker 1: most prosaic could attach no other name to this rich,
• 2:01:36
  Speaker 1: jubilant sound of the young west wind, alive once more
• 2:01:41
  Speaker 1: in the treetops, after the long enduring rain of the frost,
• 2:01:47
  Speaker 1: and with the glad new voice, a stir comes in
• 2:01:51
  Speaker 1: the heart of everything, A sudden breath fans warm upon
• 2:01:56
  Speaker 1: the cheek. With every moment there overhead freshens and quickens,
• 2:02:04
  Speaker 1: the dense mist grows lighter, and you begin to see
• 2:02:08
  Speaker 1: that it was no deep ocean of white, but only
• 2:02:12
  Speaker 1: the merest coverlet spread low upon the earth above. All
• 2:02:18
  Speaker 1: the time there was the blue sky and the clear,
• 2:02:22
  Speaker 1: untrammeled light of the young spring. Day. Faster and faster,
• 2:02:28
  Speaker 1: the mist dissolves. Loosened by the first strong sunbeams, the
• 2:02:34
  Speaker 1: hoar frost begins to fall from the tops of the
• 2:02:37
  Speaker 1: trees in tinkling gusts of sound. The mist rolls away
• 2:02:43
  Speaker 1: over the woodtop. Now the sunshine breaks through in shafts
• 2:02:49
  Speaker 1: of rich hot amber. Underfoot, the frost melts everywhere. The
• 2:02:56
  Speaker 1: grass by the wayside flashes gold and turquoise and crimson,
• 2:03:01
  Speaker 1: as the pale rhyme melts into iridescent glitter of dew.
• 2:03:07
  Speaker 1: Hard by the brook is singing its old old carol
• 2:03:11
  Speaker 1: of the year's awakening. It is as though, riding the
• 2:03:16
  Speaker 1: warm avonyan breeze spring has lapped a whole continent in
• 2:03:22
  Speaker 1: a single hour, her glad laugh ripples now through every
• 2:03:27
  Speaker 1: covert where, but yesternight winter lay gripping the earth as
• 2:03:32
  Speaker 1: with the grip of dead hands, never to be loosed.
• 2:03:38
  Speaker 1: An old reflection, and no doubt a true one on
• 2:03:42
  Speaker 1: much of the writings of the so called poet naturalists
• 2:03:46
  Speaker 1: towards the end of the nineteenth century was that they
• 2:03:50
  Speaker 1: were too much given over to a kind of emotional
• 2:03:54
  Speaker 1: exaggeration labeled by one keen yet kindly meant as purple patching.
• 2:04:03
  Speaker 1: The Phraeze went round the coteries of the time, did
• 2:04:07
  Speaker 1: its work for a space, then disappeared forever beyond the
• 2:04:12
  Speaker 1: journalistic horizon. But the half truth it stood for remains today,
• 2:04:20
  Speaker 1: with certain natures long so journing amidst the wildlife of
• 2:04:25
  Speaker 1: field and woodland, as an almost intoxicating influence, literary judgment,
• 2:04:32
  Speaker 1: the sense of proportion, management of rhythm and refrain, even
• 2:04:39
  Speaker 1: the very meaning of the words themselves become confused and lost,
• 2:04:44
  Speaker 1: and all the reader gets is a crazed, kaleidoscopic view
• 2:04:49
  Speaker 1: of broken bits of color, a jumble of sounds, each
• 2:04:53
  Speaker 1: and itself potential of music, but collectively of no more
• 2:04:59
  Speaker 1: worth than the crackle of thorns. A flair under the pot.
• 2:05:05
  Speaker 1: The truth is that to a nature lover who would
• 2:05:08
  Speaker 1: be writer, as well a sure integrity, a rigid reserve
• 2:05:13
  Speaker 1: of language, is an absolutely vital thing. In nothing is
• 2:05:19
  Speaker 1: the limitation of his material brought so fairly home to
• 2:05:23
  Speaker 1: him as when a craftsman in words sets about the
• 2:05:27
  Speaker 1: task of bringing the rich radiance of a summer's day
• 2:05:32
  Speaker 1: or the still harmony of a starry night in springtime
• 2:05:36
  Speaker 1: within the limits of a printed page, loaded line after
• 2:05:42
  Speaker 1: line of detail cataloging, as the old Jeffaresian critics called it,
• 2:05:48
  Speaker 1: will give a sense only of oppression and bewildering complexity.
• 2:05:54
  Speaker 1: The pageant of a June morning is all buoyant loveliness,
• 2:05:59
  Speaker 1: blossom and song and glad green leaves afloat on a
• 2:06:03
  Speaker 1: river of light. The starlit nights of April are pure tranquility,
• 2:06:10
  Speaker 1: done in silver point. The heavy touch of the detail
• 2:06:14
  Speaker 1: lists is as disturbing here as touring invasion of a
• 2:06:20
  Speaker 1: china store and panegyri bolting towards the upper skies with
• 2:06:26
  Speaker 1: the bright bit between its teeth, leads only where few
• 2:06:31
  Speaker 1: may follow. The pace is too swift and arduous, a
• 2:06:37
  Speaker 1: floundering fathom or two, and the guide is lost to
• 2:06:41
  Speaker 1: sight in the pathless azure. Mere earthly pinions cannot outstay
• 2:06:48
  Speaker 1: so unreasonably celestilar flight. The words coruscate and glow upon
• 2:06:55
  Speaker 1: the page, but colour clashes with colour, and sound with sound.
• 2:07:02
  Speaker 1: Their very prodigality defeats the writer's intention, and what was
• 2:07:08
  Speaker 1: proposed as a munificent gift ends as a scanty dole,
• 2:07:13
  Speaker 1: of which penury itself might be ashamed. And yet, if
• 2:07:19
  Speaker 1: any picture is to be given of these first virgin
• 2:07:23
  Speaker 1: hours of English springtime, the February summer, as Richard Jeffreys
• 2:07:28
  Speaker 1: loved to call it, words and words alone must avail,
• 2:07:35
  Speaker 1: a hundred canvasses would not be enough to show all
• 2:07:39
  Speaker 1: the rousing beauty of this one meread fasceted day. The
• 2:07:45
  Speaker 1: mist is gone from the woodland, all but a tender
• 2:07:49
  Speaker 1: violet haze that yet dwells lingeringly in the deeper shadows
• 2:07:55
  Speaker 1: out in the clearing on the southern slope of the hill.
• 2:07:59
  Speaker 1: The morning the sun has already a power and warmth
• 2:08:03
  Speaker 1: that sends the blood tingling merrily through the veins everywhere.
• 2:08:09
  Speaker 1: The soft breeze harps in the thicket with a note
• 2:08:13
  Speaker 1: that is sheer lighthearted gaiety. The air above is full
• 2:08:18
  Speaker 1: of a dim, wandering, wayward music, just as if each
• 2:08:23
  Speaker 1: sunbeam were singing as it fell under foot. In the
• 2:08:28
  Speaker 1: new green growth of February, the vanguard of the year's
• 2:08:32
  Speaker 1: blossom shows bravely through the sheltering bents, pale sulfur of
• 2:08:39
  Speaker 1: the earliest primroses, tiny purple banners of violet, bold bright
• 2:08:45
  Speaker 1: eyes of celandine flashing under every older stem. Here and
• 2:08:51
  Speaker 1: there the colt's foot rears a sheaf of golden tassels,
• 2:08:56
  Speaker 1: and a few of the more adventurous of the hive
• 2:08:59
  Speaker 1: bees are out in the hazels, dallying with the pale
• 2:09:04
  Speaker 1: green catkins that slant all one way upon the breeze.
• 2:09:10
  Speaker 1: Down in the water meadows, the cattle are basking in
• 2:09:13
  Speaker 1: the generous light, just as if summer were really upon them.
• 2:09:19
  Speaker 1: The river beyond has its old, bright summer breadth of
• 2:09:23
  Speaker 1: mirrored sunbeams, where now and again the little coot, half swimming,
• 2:09:29
  Speaker 1: half flying, cuts a dark trace over the water, and
• 2:09:34
  Speaker 1: a kingfisher gleams like a star of blue green tinsel
• 2:09:39
  Speaker 1: as he basks on the stump of osia deep in
• 2:09:42
  Speaker 1: the gray reed stems. It was all here yesterday, hidden
• 2:09:49
  Speaker 1: under the dower rhyme curtain of those last strenuous winter days,
• 2:09:55
  Speaker 1: only the touch of warm west wind was lacking. And
• 2:09:59
  Speaker 1: now well though frost and snow may return for a
• 2:10:03
  Speaker 1: little space, spring has made his first real foothold shure.
• 2:10:09
  Speaker 1: Ere he girds up to overrun the world. End of
• 2:10:15
  Speaker 1: chapter nine, Chapter ten of An Idler in the Wilds
• 2:10:25
  Speaker 1: by Tickner Edwards. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.
• 2:10:32
  Speaker 1: The Black Republic, under the lee of the elmwood, the
• 2:10:38
  Speaker 1: old farmhouse stands, its latticed windows, a fire in the
• 2:10:43
  Speaker 1: rose red glory of the lifting sun. For many a
• 2:10:47
  Speaker 1: long day past, the northwest gale has thundered in the treetops.
• 2:10:53
  Speaker 1: But now under cover of the darkness, the chill, unruly
• 2:10:58
  Speaker 1: wind has gone. March has come in, like the proverbial
• 2:11:03
  Speaker 1: lamb in pure gold. The dim eyed morning breaks through
• 2:11:09
  Speaker 1: the trellis of purple cloud, and the voice of the
• 2:11:12
  Speaker 1: wind in the towering elm grove has given place to
• 2:11:16
  Speaker 1: the busy clamor of the nesting rooks. Perhaps it is
• 2:11:22
  Speaker 1: this sudden, well nigh mysterious return of the rooks in
• 2:11:26
  Speaker 1: springtime to their old ancestral breeding place that marks more
• 2:11:32
  Speaker 1: than anything else, the progress of the year. Ever since June,
• 2:11:38
  Speaker 1: the Rookery has been deserted. Now and again a solitary
• 2:11:43
  Speaker 1: bird could be seen taking a swift survey in passing
• 2:11:48
  Speaker 1: of the abandoned homesteads, and in November a few of
• 2:11:53
  Speaker 1: the black wicker cradles were furbished up and stanchioned against
• 2:11:58
  Speaker 1: the coming winter blasts. But until yesterday, when February went
• 2:12:04
  Speaker 1: out with its surging tumult of wind, the Rookery was
• 2:12:08
  Speaker 1: given over to the starlings, and the sooty army still
• 2:12:13
  Speaker 1: kept far afield, searching the new turned furrows, or making
• 2:12:19
  Speaker 1: common cause with the jagdaws down on the riverside flats.
• 2:12:25
  Speaker 1: Then came at last sunsets, failing breeze and a windless,
• 2:12:30
  Speaker 1: gloaming darkness brimming planet high with a new strange silence,
• 2:12:37
  Speaker 1: warm wandering airs filling the deepest hour before the dawn,
• 2:12:42
  Speaker 1: And then with the first gray tinge of morning, a
• 2:12:47
  Speaker 1: sudden babel of voices overhead daybreak revealed the airy city
• 2:12:54
  Speaker 1: populous as ever, each nest, a dark blotch against the
• 2:12:59
  Speaker 1: paling sky had its clangorous pair about it. Dusky wings
• 2:13:05
  Speaker 1: were cleaving the twilight everywhere, the summer life of the
• 2:13:10
  Speaker 1: rookery had begun, as it nearly always does, with the
• 2:13:15
  Speaker 1: first still sunny hour of March. If a human parallel
• 2:13:21
  Speaker 1: may be found in the lives of most wild creatures
• 2:13:24
  Speaker 1: of the countryside, in nothing is this more evident than
• 2:13:29
  Speaker 1: in the social life of the rook. It is true
• 2:13:34
  Speaker 1: he concerns himself with none of the more picturesque attributes,
• 2:13:38
  Speaker 1: nor the subtler graces of humankind. For these we must
• 2:13:44
  Speaker 1: seek elsewhere in the world of feathered things. The skylock
• 2:13:49
  Speaker 1: has his prototype among musical humanity in that he loves
• 2:13:55
  Speaker 1: to sing his pure song in the farthermost skies, but
• 2:14:00
  Speaker 1: his daily life through willingly enough amidst the lowliest clods.
• 2:14:07
  Speaker 1: The ringing laugh of the woodpecker is blatant human cynicism impersonified.
• 2:14:14
  Speaker 1: The thrush stands for invincible lightheartedness, the dogged optimism that
• 2:14:19
  Speaker 1: holds up its brave, foolish face against all adversities rebuffs.
• 2:14:26
  Speaker 1: The nightingale is worldly grief's melodious advocate. Every note tells
• 2:14:33
  Speaker 1: of a cherishing of sorrow and overweening vanity in pain.
• 2:14:39
  Speaker 1: But the rook contemns all fine foibles and empty, unproductive sentiment.
• 2:14:46
  Speaker 1: He will have nothing but the obvious verities of life.
• 2:14:50
  Speaker 1: A grim and color fast utilitarianism rules his every act.
• 2:14:57
  Speaker 1: He has indeed an old and undeserved re pute for sociability,
• 2:15:02
  Speaker 1: in that he often builds his airy castle nigh to
• 2:15:06
  Speaker 1: human settlements. But this is out of no respect or
• 2:15:12
  Speaker 1: confidence in the selected neighbour. The rook knows that other
• 2:15:17
  Speaker 1: and more active enemies of his shun the vicinage of man,
• 2:15:22
  Speaker 1: and he deliberately makes choice of the lesser evil man.
• 2:15:28
  Speaker 1: He trusts not a jot more than any other living thing.
• 2:15:33
  Speaker 1: He keeps all alike at strategic distance. It is as
• 2:15:38
  Speaker 1: if he had measured out a gunshot's length on every
• 2:15:42
  Speaker 1: side of his aerial dwelling, and any encroachment within this
• 2:15:48
  Speaker 1: necromantic circle is followed at once by the whole colonies
• 2:15:53
  Speaker 1: precipitate flight. And yet as an understudy of a certain
• 2:15:58
  Speaker 1: type of human nature, the rook may be said to
• 2:16:02
  Speaker 1: fulfill the conditions more nearly than any other bird. His
• 2:16:08
  Speaker 1: main personal characteristic would appear to be a crafty, timorousness,
• 2:16:14
  Speaker 1: discretion brought by heredity almost to the fine points of cowardice.
• 2:16:21
  Speaker 1: For the rest. As an individual, he seems to be
• 2:16:25
  Speaker 1: chiefly made up of worldly wisdom, anxious foresight, much love,
• 2:16:30
  Speaker 1: of bodily security, and intellectual selfishness, all developed to a
• 2:16:37
  Speaker 1: sharp focus through unnumbered generations. For all these qualities influence
• 2:16:44
  Speaker 1: his daily life and are at the bottom of his
• 2:16:47
  Speaker 1: conduct consistently throughout his triple duty to himself, his mate,
• 2:16:53
  Speaker 1: and his fellows. The marital life of each pair of
• 2:16:59
  Speaker 1: rooksm's a curious study in domestic compromise. For more than
• 2:17:05
  Speaker 1: eight months in the year, the partner's lead an indifferent,
• 2:17:09
  Speaker 1: perhaps an entirely separate existence. And then with the first
• 2:17:15
  Speaker 1: calm days of March comes this annual honeymooning, carefully timed
• 2:17:21
  Speaker 1: for the heyday of the year, three months of domestic
• 2:17:25
  Speaker 1: joy and care spent high up in the swaying elm
• 2:17:29
  Speaker 1: tops when they seem to develop suddenly a whole new
• 2:17:34
  Speaker 1: sheaf of parental and loverlike attributes. The repair of the
• 2:17:40
  Speaker 1: old nest or the building of a new one, and
• 2:17:43
  Speaker 1: its preparation for the coming brood is an absorbing mutual anxiety.
• 2:17:50
  Speaker 1: All through this time and the period of incubation following,
• 2:17:55
  Speaker 1: the rook assiduously feeds. His mate, waits upon her with
• 2:18:01
  Speaker 1: unwearying attention, and on rare occasions will even take his
• 2:18:06
  Speaker 1: turn upon the eggs, while she stretches her wings a little,
• 2:18:11
  Speaker 1: flapping about ponderously in the neighboring branches, the pair keeping
• 2:18:17
  Speaker 1: up a running fire of comment on the affairs of
• 2:18:20
  Speaker 1: the rookery in general, in that rich, deep language of
• 2:18:25
  Speaker 1: which we can only gather the merest inkling now and then.
• 2:18:31
  Speaker 1: But it is in the corporate life of the rookery
• 2:18:34
  Speaker 1: that the observer's interest must chiefly center. The spirit of
• 2:18:40
  Speaker 1: a medieval stronghold permeates it through and through, linked, nevertheless
• 2:18:47
  Speaker 1: with a genuine modern republican feeling. How nice a balance
• 2:18:52
  Speaker 1: has been struck between individual and collective polity in these
• 2:18:57
  Speaker 1: black republics of the tree top will probably never be
• 2:19:02
  Speaker 1: fully ascertained. Most lover students of nature are willing to
• 2:19:08
  Speaker 1: admit the finite quality in all human observation and deduction
• 2:19:13
  Speaker 1: of this kind. The drawn curtain and the closed door
• 2:19:19
  Speaker 1: oppose them at every turn of the difficult way. But
• 2:19:24
  Speaker 1: that system and order, tried and proved through countless ages,
• 2:19:29
  Speaker 1: are at the base of many apparently unaccountable things in
• 2:19:33
  Speaker 1: rook government is at least certain. Watching a colony of
• 2:19:38
  Speaker 1: Rooks by means of a powerful glass on any fine
• 2:19:43
  Speaker 1: still day in early springtime, many curious traits in their
• 2:19:48
  Speaker 1: communal life are soon revealed. Though a complete general understanding
• 2:19:54
  Speaker 1: of what is needful for the common good can be
• 2:19:57
  Speaker 1: at once detected, it is all so soon evident that
• 2:20:01
  Speaker 1: each pair is deeply imbued with an only half concealed
• 2:20:06
  Speaker 1: distrust of its fellows. A polite fiction of mutual confidence
• 2:20:12
  Speaker 1: is indeed maintained by all, but there is an equally
• 2:20:17
  Speaker 1: obvious determination on the part of each couple never to
• 2:20:21
  Speaker 1: run the risk of possible dishonesty in its neighbours. The
• 2:20:26
  Speaker 1: half built nest is never left unguarded. One of the
• 2:20:31
  Speaker 1: partners invariably remains on the watch while the other is
• 2:20:36
  Speaker 1: absent foraging for sticks. Just as there is always a
• 2:20:41
  Speaker 1: black sheep in every fold, there seems to be in
• 2:20:45
  Speaker 1: most rookeries one of the swart brotherhood, whose blackness goes
• 2:20:50
  Speaker 1: all the way through. Sometimes, in the midst of the
• 2:20:54
  Speaker 1: busy cooring and bustle of the day, a sudden hubbub
• 2:20:58
  Speaker 1: will arise round one of the nests. A fierce conflict
• 2:21:03
  Speaker 1: is waging. Half a dozen birds have launched themselves upon it,
• 2:21:09
  Speaker 1: rending it to fragments and casting it like chaff to
• 2:21:13
  Speaker 1: the ground, while others are chasing off the luckless proprietors,
• 2:21:19
  Speaker 1: following them through the blue air with a sound not
• 2:21:23
  Speaker 1: wholly unlike that of a pack of hounds in full cry.
• 2:21:28
  Speaker 1: It is difficult to make sure of the motive for
• 2:21:31
  Speaker 1: this determined eviction, but in all likelihood a pilferer from
• 2:21:37
  Speaker 1: other nests has been caught at his work, and destruction
• 2:21:41
  Speaker 1: of his own home and banishment from the colony is
• 2:21:45
  Speaker 1: the ordained penalty for the offense. Sometimes a solitary rook
• 2:21:52
  Speaker 1: may be seen flying from treetop to treetop, taking a
• 2:21:56
  Speaker 1: frantic interest in the work of the others, yet invariably
• 2:22:01
  Speaker 1: met at all points by rude repulse and buffetings. This
• 2:22:07
  Speaker 1: is the odd bird in the rookery. A great disgrace
• 2:22:11
  Speaker 1: is upon him, the disgrace of bachelorhood, and there will
• 2:22:16
  Speaker 1: be no peace for himself, nor good repute with his neighbours, until,
• 2:22:22
  Speaker 1: by some means or other, his matrimonial shortcomings have been
• 2:22:26
  Speaker 1: made good at last, in some mysterious way, perhaps by
• 2:22:33
  Speaker 1: mating with a widow rook from another colony, he gets
• 2:22:37
  Speaker 1: him a wife, and the new pair settled down to
• 2:22:40
  Speaker 1: nest building, often in a tree far removed from the rest.
• 2:22:47
  Speaker 1: An interesting point in all nature study, and never more
• 2:22:51
  Speaker 1: interesting than when the rook is under debate, is in
• 2:22:56
  Speaker 1: what degree the songs and call notes of birds constitute
• 2:23:00
  Speaker 1: a language, a real medium of communication, not only between
• 2:23:06
  Speaker 1: each songster and his mate, but throughout the general commonwealth
• 2:23:11
  Speaker 1: of wings. When the rooks are delving in the furrows
• 2:23:15
  Speaker 1: on land set about by dense hedgerows, a sentinel is
• 2:23:20
  Speaker 1: always posted in one of the neighboring trees, and there
• 2:23:25
  Speaker 1: is no mistaking the import of the cry by which
• 2:23:29
  Speaker 1: he warns his people below of the approach of any
• 2:23:32
  Speaker 1: enemy look out. The words sheltered lustily across a field
• 2:23:39
  Speaker 1: would almost exactly reproduce the loud, raucous note that sets
• 2:23:45
  Speaker 1: the whole company at once in full retreat. And when
• 2:23:50
  Speaker 1: flying away from the gun, a long straggling line of
• 2:23:54
  Speaker 1: rooks stretches by overhead, there is no doubt of the
• 2:23:58
  Speaker 1: meaning of the harsh, desultory sounds that break from the
• 2:24:04
  Speaker 1: hurrying throng anger mutual congratulation that escape a fine disgust
• 2:24:11
  Speaker 1: that the interruption of their raid on the growing corn.
• 2:24:15
  Speaker 1: Each quality is easily distinguishable in the general chorus. But
• 2:24:22
  Speaker 1: lying out here in the shelter of the hedgerow, on
• 2:24:25
  Speaker 1: any soft sunny March morning, when your presence is unknown
• 2:24:30
  Speaker 1: or disregarded, and the busy life of the rookery is
• 2:24:34
  Speaker 1: going forward without suspicion or alloy, it is not so
• 2:24:39
  Speaker 1: easy to isolate expression among the thousand varied notes that
• 2:24:44
  Speaker 1: go to make up the rich, laborious cadence overhead. Perhaps
• 2:24:50
  Speaker 1: there is nothing in nature so supremely soothing and RESTful
• 2:24:55
  Speaker 1: as the harmonious uproar of the nesting rooks. March brings
• 2:25:01
  Speaker 1: with it another sound, the voice from the lamming pens,
• 2:25:06
  Speaker 1: almost as sweet and as full of the promise of spring.
• 2:25:11
  Speaker 1: But this has none of the deep, forceful murmur of
• 2:25:15
  Speaker 1: the rookery. It is a plaint, a lamentation night and day.
• 2:25:21
  Speaker 1: The pathos of it rends the air, sobering the gladness
• 2:25:25
  Speaker 1: of the sunshine and lifting its protest against the bright
• 2:25:30
  Speaker 1: serenity of the moonlit night. But there is no weak,
• 2:25:36
  Speaker 1: pooling quality in this tree top music of the rook
• 2:25:41
  Speaker 1: life as he knows it is often hard, often relentlessly cruel,
• 2:25:47
  Speaker 1: but he takes bitter and sweet with the same egotistic philosophy.
• 2:25:53
  Speaker 1: When the wind blows with hurricane strength and in an
• 2:25:57
  Speaker 1: hour undoes the work of many days, he goes about
• 2:26:02
  Speaker 1: the task again with a fine imperturbability. Warmth and sunshine
• 2:26:08
  Speaker 1: and the lazy clouds creeping over the windless blue mean
• 2:26:13
  Speaker 1: for him labor without enthusiasm, and darkness with the Rook
• 2:26:20
  Speaker 1: is but another name for rest and dreamless sleep. While
• 2:26:25
  Speaker 1: the lamming yard below makes the small ars vociferous with
• 2:26:29
  Speaker 1: its eternal yammering and calling. The quietest place in the
• 2:26:34
  Speaker 1: countryside is the populous Rook City, set in its garden
• 2:26:39
  Speaker 1: of elm blossom and hung midway between Earth and the
• 2:26:44
  Speaker 1: glittering starstrewn night. End of chapter ten, Chapter eleven of
• 2:26:58
  Speaker 1: an Idler in the Wilds by Tickner Edwards. This LibriVox
• 2:27:03
  Speaker 1: recording is in the public domain. April's Festival. When March
• 2:27:10
  Speaker 1: is done and the first sunbright April morning glitters over
• 2:27:15
  Speaker 1: budding woodland and daisy spangled field, often a curious feeling
• 2:27:21
  Speaker 1: of discontent, an ill defined impatience asserts itself amid all
• 2:27:27
  Speaker 1: the gladness and exultant life of the young spring day.
• 2:27:33
  Speaker 1: Standing here on the ancient rustic footbridge, spanning the stream
• 2:27:37
  Speaker 1: just where it emerges from the wood, and watching the
• 2:27:41
  Speaker 1: bright water rippling through the flowery meadow, this old sensation
• 2:27:46
  Speaker 1: of shortcoming, of something wanting in the fullness of the
• 2:27:51
  Speaker 1: radiant season seems to strike home to the heart as
• 2:27:55
  Speaker 1: it has never done before. Ne d the brimming tide
• 2:28:01
  Speaker 1: of april blossom rises all around you, the tall buttercups
• 2:28:07
  Speaker 1: cling together by the wayside until there seems hardly room
• 2:28:11
  Speaker 1: for one more golden bell. The daisies spread beyond a vast,
• 2:28:17
  Speaker 1: unbroken sheet of silver, with the nodding ladies' moocks making
• 2:28:22
  Speaker 1: a rosy mister beauty over All everywhere, the hedgerows are
• 2:28:28
  Speaker 1: full of fresh green spray. In the wood behind, the
• 2:28:33
  Speaker 1: primroses crowd down to the water's edge, where the elders
• 2:28:38
  Speaker 1: trail their new tresses in its gentle flow. But the
• 2:28:43
  Speaker 1: forest trees still lack fulfillment of the universal promise. Though
• 2:28:49
  Speaker 1: the tree tops overhead are thick with a myriad bursting buds,
• 2:28:54
  Speaker 1: Hardly the faintest tinge of summer verdure shows against the
• 2:28:58
  Speaker 1: blue the old storm fretted grays and russets still prevail,
• 2:29:05
  Speaker 1: and the sunlight thrusts its yellow fingers into every secret
• 2:29:09
  Speaker 1: nook and woodland hollow, just as it did in wintry
• 2:29:14
  Speaker 1: days gone by. And it is just now, when April
• 2:29:19
  Speaker 1: is no more a dim and far away ideal, but
• 2:29:23
  Speaker 1: a living, tangible reality, that this impatient longing, the longing
• 2:29:29
  Speaker 1: for green leaves, comes to you with redoubled force. Day
• 2:29:35
  Speaker 1: by day and week by week, you have watch'd the
• 2:29:38
  Speaker 1: year grow out of the frosty silence of December, through
• 2:29:43
  Speaker 1: January's penurious hours, and the ever quickening time that followed,
• 2:29:49
  Speaker 1: until at last the first gold stars of Celandine shone
• 2:29:53
  Speaker 1: by the pass side, and the elms stood out in
• 2:29:57
  Speaker 1: great cliffs of purple blossom against the cloud dapple blue
• 2:30:02
  Speaker 1: of early March. And this one thought grew unchecked upon
• 2:30:07
  Speaker 1: the mind, the thought that April would bring an all
• 2:30:11
  Speaker 1: sufficing fullness and perfection, a high running sea of colour
• 2:30:16
  Speaker 1: to every field and forest, clearing to the air, a
• 2:30:20
  Speaker 1: thousand new strains of music to the woods, the old
• 2:30:26
  Speaker 1: dancing frolic of green shadows over fallen leaves below. But
• 2:30:32
  Speaker 1: April has come, and the splendor of the year still
• 2:30:36
  Speaker 1: hugs close to the warm, protecting soil. The treetops, thick
• 2:30:42
  Speaker 1: and full of budding promise, are yet only dark intersections
• 2:30:47
  Speaker 1: against the azure. All the gay profusion of sunshine and
• 2:30:53
  Speaker 1: rich abandon of colour beneath will not atone for the
• 2:30:57
  Speaker 1: bare tree stems and unladen bronze, though they sing like
• 2:31:02
  Speaker 1: coffee and lutestrings all day long in the sweet, hot wind. April,
• 2:31:09
  Speaker 1: long awaited, has come at last, but the summer canopy
• 2:31:13
  Speaker 1: of green foliage seems as remote as ever, infinite leagues
• 2:31:18
  Speaker 1: away under the white cloud country of the glistening southern sky.
• 2:31:25
  Speaker 1: But this old obsession of impatience, inveterate as it is unreasoning,
• 2:31:31
  Speaker 1: owes its existence to the fact that it takes account
• 2:31:35
  Speaker 1: of only half a truth. Spring paints her picture over
• 2:31:41
  Speaker 1: the sober grays and drabs of winter in minute, scarce
• 2:31:46
  Speaker 1: discernible touches, but Summer works with a large impressionist brush.
• 2:31:54
  Speaker 1: Spring is the true year Dawn, a sure yet deliberate
• 2:31:59
  Speaker 1: fashioning of a new temple of the world, built out
• 2:32:03
  Speaker 1: of fallen sunbeams, tier above tier, until young April crowns
• 2:32:09
  Speaker 1: the topmost pinnacle with its joyous shimmering light in the
• 2:32:15
  Speaker 1: first virgin hours of English April. A lull seems, indeed
• 2:32:20
  Speaker 1: to come in the tumultuous march of things. It is
• 2:32:25
  Speaker 1: as if the young season tarried in the shining galaway
• 2:32:29
  Speaker 1: of the world, reluctant, lingering, though decked and ready as
• 2:32:34
  Speaker 1: for the bridal feast. But this rich hiatus in the
• 2:32:39
  Speaker 1: throng of growth and life endures but for a little space.
• 2:32:45
  Speaker 1: A day comes when the whole spirit of the countryside
• 2:32:49
  Speaker 1: is swiftly and wonderfully changed. The sun burns with an
• 2:32:55
  Speaker 1: unwonted vigor out of the cloudless blue hill, and day
• 2:33:00
  Speaker 1: seem to throb with a new awakened energy. The stir
• 2:33:05
  Speaker 1: of the west wind in the treetops dies down to
• 2:33:08
  Speaker 1: the softest, drowsiest murmur that creeps in the air like
• 2:33:13
  Speaker 1: a seashell song, and over all the green alleys of
• 2:33:18
  Speaker 1: the earth, a passion of strange new music spreads. Summer
• 2:33:23
  Speaker 1: comes at last, as with the sudden breaking down of barriers.
• 2:33:28
  Speaker 1: And to stand here now on the ancient footbridge by
• 2:33:31
  Speaker 1: the wood, watching the new impetuous course of things is
• 2:33:36
  Speaker 1: to be shamed at once out of all past niggard discontents.
• 2:33:43
  Speaker 1: It is all like a rushing, overwhelming torrents now. Every
• 2:33:48
  Speaker 1: moment a fresh voice comes to the song laden morning,
• 2:33:53
  Speaker 1: every moment the shadows seem to deepen in the wood behind,
• 2:33:57
  Speaker 1: as the leaves unfurl their mitre we add banners to
• 2:34:01
  Speaker 1: the urging light. Sweet and low in the greening woodtop sounds,
• 2:34:08
  Speaker 1: the croon of the wind, lower, sweeter still, the song
• 2:34:12
  Speaker 1: of the brook beneath as it threads its way through
• 2:34:16
  Speaker 1: the last steer marches of hazel and out into the
• 2:34:20
  Speaker 1: sunny calm of meadowland. Beyond, great tangles of marsh marrigold
• 2:34:26
  Speaker 1: line the bank on either side. A white drift of
• 2:34:31
  Speaker 1: crow's foot clogs the channel here and there, and the
• 2:34:35
  Speaker 1: hurrying water breaks it into glittering delters where the honey
• 2:34:40
  Speaker 1: bees come down to drink, making a rich, deep undertone
• 2:34:45
  Speaker 1: for the merry bird voices of the wood. This sound
• 2:34:48
  Speaker 1: of the bees is everywhere about you, a sound like
• 2:34:53
  Speaker 1: an invisible river of rejoicing. Overhead, thousands upon thousands pass swiftly,
• 2:35:01
  Speaker 1: steadily out and home, passing so swiftly that the eye
• 2:35:06
  Speaker 1: may never see the flash of one crystal wing in
• 2:35:09
  Speaker 1: a hole. Hours gazing, yet charging the already over burdened
• 2:35:14
  Speaker 1: air with more music, gilding the refined song gold of
• 2:35:18
  Speaker 1: the morning, with their glad, superfluous note. All the old
• 2:35:24
  Speaker 1: familiar sights and sounds of springtime are here, still yet
• 2:35:29
  Speaker 1: transfigured into summer depth and fullness. Strong and clear, from
• 2:35:35
  Speaker 1: the distant thicket comes the blackbird's song. But it is
• 2:35:39
  Speaker 1: no longer a furtive trying over of some of the
• 2:35:43
  Speaker 1: briefest of his finer dadgios and mellow phrasers. The old, ripe,
• 2:35:49
  Speaker 1: leisurely chant of summer comes to you unabated now through
• 2:35:54
  Speaker 1: the dazzling mirage of the April day. At every link
• 2:35:59
  Speaker 1: in the snow chain of blackthorn garlanding the meadow thrushers
• 2:36:04
  Speaker 1: pour out their freest, wildest malady. Little ock's eyes fill
• 2:36:10
  Speaker 1: the wood behind with winnying silver strains. Deep in the
• 2:36:16
  Speaker 1: thick daisy jungle of the mowing grass, starlings utter their high, insistent,
• 2:36:22
  Speaker 1: domineering note, unseen save when one thrust his crimson snakelike
• 2:36:28
  Speaker 1: head for a moment through the white tilt of blossom,
• 2:36:32
  Speaker 1: or slance jubilantly away in the sunlight towards the shadowy
• 2:36:37
  Speaker 1: fastness of the wood and one by one, as you
• 2:36:42
  Speaker 1: wait on the crazy moss grown bridge, the migrant minstrels
• 2:36:46
  Speaker 1: from overseas take up their long abandoned parts in the
• 2:36:50
  Speaker 1: summer symphony. First the little willow wren, softly tinkling her
• 2:36:56
  Speaker 1: peel of chariot bells high up in the top branches,
• 2:37:01
  Speaker 1: and then the Rheineck, the cuckoo's mate, hilloing from his
• 2:37:06
  Speaker 1: mazy perch half way up the elm trunk, a strange,
• 2:37:11
  Speaker 1: penetrating note with a vehement, uncanny brightness, unlike any other
• 2:37:17
  Speaker 1: sound in all the countryside. The long hailing cry echoes
• 2:37:23
  Speaker 1: up the valley and dies away in blue distance as
• 2:37:27
  Speaker 1: the bird pursues his restless flight. But the sound has
• 2:37:32
  Speaker 1: awakened old, long dormant memories, the first green leaves of April,
• 2:37:39
  Speaker 1: and the rhye Neeck's note, and then the cuckoo himself.
• 2:37:43
  Speaker 1: The old order never changes, and now day by day
• 2:37:49
  Speaker 1: you will listen until the rich, quiet sea saw melody
• 2:37:53
  Speaker 1: is borne upon the breeze out of the farther most azure,
• 2:37:58
  Speaker 1: and hard upon the heel of his vosiferous mate. The
• 2:38:02
  Speaker 1: cuckoo has come to Wanton through his English holiday. But
• 2:38:08
  Speaker 1: the sweetest sound in April's glittering festival of song and
• 2:38:12
  Speaker 1: sunshine is the lovelorn plaint of the Nightingale. Here by
• 2:38:18
  Speaker 1: the brook, an old hawthorne stands its gnarled roots jutting
• 2:38:23
  Speaker 1: out into the stream below, centuries of twisted, weather beaten
• 2:38:28
  Speaker 1: growth above, lifting its mantle of new verdure into the
• 2:38:33
  Speaker 1: tremulous sultry air, and to this green watchtower. Season after season,
• 2:38:40
  Speaker 1: the first Nightingale is sure to come. You will never
• 2:38:45
  Speaker 1: witness the hour of his returning. No one has ever
• 2:38:49
  Speaker 1: seen the Nightingale come or go. All you can be
• 2:38:54
  Speaker 1: certain of is this that yesterday he was not. But
• 2:38:59
  Speaker 1: today his soft, lingering cadence feels the old thorn bush.
• 2:39:05
  Speaker 1: And while his matchless voice wells out upon the sunlight,
• 2:39:10
  Speaker 1: all other voices of the morning seem for the moment overpowered.
• 2:39:16
  Speaker 1: If you would hear the nightingale's true song as the
• 2:39:20
  Speaker 1: ages know it, you must look for him in some
• 2:39:23
  Speaker 1: such wild, deserted haunt as this. The village pensioner bird
• 2:39:29
  Speaker 1: trilling in the hedgerow for his supper, will give you
• 2:39:33
  Speaker 1: only a disjointed clockwork strain. You must wait for him
• 2:39:38
  Speaker 1: here by his ancestral halting place to catch his true
• 2:39:42
  Speaker 1: authentic music unawares. As you listen under the green twilight
• 2:39:48
  Speaker 1: of the hazels, his first, low, indolent note drifts out
• 2:39:54
  Speaker 1: upon the air. It is like the tuning up of
• 2:39:58
  Speaker 1: some priceless sythy There are the strings just moved with
• 2:40:02
  Speaker 1: the lightest touch of a master's hand. Then he gives
• 2:40:07
  Speaker 1: you a quick bright cord or two, struck at random
• 2:40:11
  Speaker 1: here and there in the silvan scale. And then the
• 2:40:16
  Speaker 1: deep pondering note once more, sad and slow, repeated over
• 2:40:22
  Speaker 1: and over again. A moment more, and he is in
• 2:40:27
  Speaker 1: the thick of his pell mell music. It is the
• 2:40:31
  Speaker 1: whole blithe pageant of the springtime, translated into song, living
• 2:40:37
  Speaker 1: blue sky and dancing sunbeams, and all the sweet large
• 2:40:42
  Speaker 1: ass of april blossom, given over again in rippling, joyous sound.
• 2:40:51
  Speaker 1: End of chapter eleven Chapter twelve of An Idler in
• 2:41:01
  Speaker 1: the Wilds by Tickner Edwards. This LibriVox recording is in
• 2:41:06
  Speaker 1: the public domain, a forgotten Eden. Often the most beautiful
• 2:41:14
  Speaker 1: things in nature are nature's reclamations from man. This old
• 2:41:20
  Speaker 1: chalk quarry on the river's brink has long ago heard
• 2:41:24
  Speaker 1: the last ringing blow of the pickaxe the last dull
• 2:41:28
  Speaker 1: roar and crackling thunder of the blasting charge. Half a
• 2:41:33
  Speaker 1: century of disuse has given it back to the Valerian
• 2:41:38
  Speaker 1: and the wild clamatus. Each year of sunshine has raised
• 2:41:43
  Speaker 1: the flood mark of green growth higher and higher up
• 2:41:47
  Speaker 1: the grisly face of the cliff. It is always in
• 2:41:52
  Speaker 1: these sheltered solitudes that spring wins her first bright way
• 2:41:57
  Speaker 1: in the universe. Out on the upland through all the
• 2:42:01
  Speaker 1: callow months of the year. It is even given take
• 2:42:06
  Speaker 1: between the sun and the keen north wind, and March
• 2:42:10
  Speaker 1: is almost done before the issue of the conflict is decided.
• 2:42:16
  Speaker 1: But here in the tranquil haven of the old Quarry,
• 2:42:20
  Speaker 1: one clear week of sunny weather and the year's fresh
• 2:42:24
  Speaker 1: gold of Celandine is springing in the grass. The Coltsfoot
• 2:42:29
  Speaker 1: showers its bright mintage from every crevise. Red archangel has
• 2:42:35
  Speaker 1: gotten its banquet ready for the first intrepid humblebee. The
• 2:42:40
  Speaker 1: north wind can do no more than rumble in the
• 2:42:44
  Speaker 1: larches where they fringe the blue sky far overhead, or
• 2:42:49
  Speaker 1: beat back the yelping company of jeck Doors as it
• 2:42:53
  Speaker 1: lives a thousand strong into the sheer air and away
• 2:42:59
  Speaker 1: on some mistake serious enterprise, needing the whole force of
• 2:43:03
  Speaker 1: the sooty battalion. But it is in the rich, lush
• 2:43:08
  Speaker 1: season of May that these deserted human outworks take on
• 2:43:13
  Speaker 1: their chiefest glory. Then John the Baptist April has done
• 2:43:18
  Speaker 1: his crying in the wilderness, Hope has his girdon of
• 2:43:23
  Speaker 1: green leaves and promise her fulfillment of blossom. In the
• 2:43:28
  Speaker 1: old chalk quarry, summer seems to have reared his garner house,
• 2:43:34
  Speaker 1: where with a bounding treasure of light and song and colour,
• 2:43:39
  Speaker 1: he makes ready to overflow the outer world, coming suddenly
• 2:43:45
  Speaker 1: into the great gray semicircle from the path by the riverside,
• 2:43:50
  Speaker 1: the old chalk pit seems to lie deep in an
• 2:43:53
  Speaker 1: immemorial silence. The jackdaws have streamed off on their usual
• 2:43:59
  Speaker 1: morning errand their shrill clamor has died away. There is
• 2:44:05
  Speaker 1: nothing of it now but a faint, distant note haunting
• 2:44:09
  Speaker 1: the tremulous sunshine. Far out on the river plain. Round
• 2:44:15
  Speaker 1: the foot of the perpendicular cliff, a white mist of
• 2:44:19
  Speaker 1: Churville hovers green ivy shows it up dizzily wherever a
• 2:44:25
  Speaker 1: root can get finger hold on ledge or in cranny
• 2:44:29
  Speaker 1: rich streaks of colour, marble, the towering, rugged waste. At first,
• 2:44:36
  Speaker 1: there seems only a great silence everywhere. A rabbit, watching
• 2:44:42
  Speaker 1: you from her burrow high up in the face of
• 2:44:44
  Speaker 1: the cliff, stamps her hind feet sharply now and again
• 2:44:49
  Speaker 1: to warn the unseen colony behind her, And the noise
• 2:44:54
  Speaker 1: comes down to you like the intermittent roll of a drum.
• 2:44:59
  Speaker 1: In the blossom. The bees keep up their tender undertone.
• 2:45:05
  Speaker 1: There is no other sound in all the wide expanse.
• 2:45:09
  Speaker 1: So wild is the place that your mere coming has
• 2:45:13
  Speaker 1: put an end to all the music. You must wait here,
• 2:45:17
  Speaker 1: in the shadow of the thorn tree, until the clatter
• 2:45:21
  Speaker 1: of your boots has been forgotten, and the musicians have
• 2:45:25
  Speaker 1: found their cue again in the interrupted symphony. At length,
• 2:45:31
  Speaker 1: by little and little, the silence fails and ebbs away.
• 2:45:37
  Speaker 1: A wren trills a bar or two, all on one
• 2:45:41
  Speaker 1: stop of her slender silver whistle, hard by. A thrush
• 2:45:46
  Speaker 1: goes on with her weft of bright melody just where
• 2:45:50
  Speaker 1: she broke it off to spy at you from the
• 2:45:53
  Speaker 1: top of the sycamore tree. Chaffinchers clink their castanettes. A
• 2:45:59
  Speaker 1: chef chaff loops after his mate piecing his odds and
• 2:46:04
  Speaker 1: ends of music together. As he flies rich and low.
• 2:46:09
  Speaker 1: The woodpigeons take up the crooning burden of their love song.
• 2:46:14
  Speaker 1: Life in the deserted quarry moves on again in the
• 2:46:18
  Speaker 1: old primeval, hasteless, joyous way. This is the making place
• 2:46:25
  Speaker 1: of summer dreams. Lying here on the soft grass, in
• 2:46:30
  Speaker 1: the shadow of the thorn tree, and listening to the
• 2:46:33
  Speaker 1: wayward note of the bees in the may bloom overhead,
• 2:46:37
  Speaker 1: every voice of the countryside seems to echo through the
• 2:46:41
  Speaker 1: still air, yet with a slower, sweeter cadence than any
• 2:46:47
  Speaker 1: you have known before. Even the river, gliding by the
• 2:46:52
  Speaker 1: old quarry, deep in its thicket of reeds, seems wholly
• 2:46:56
  Speaker 1: different here from the swirling highway of water you knew
• 2:47:01
  Speaker 1: in the town there, as it threaded the eyes of
• 2:47:05
  Speaker 1: the twin bridges, the old brick viaduct with its decorous
• 2:47:10
  Speaker 1: draping of moss and damber wallflowers, and the new bridge
• 2:47:15
  Speaker 1: straddling its naked gray iron mungery unashamed in the stair
• 2:47:20
  Speaker 1: of the town. The river went by with a busy
• 2:47:23
  Speaker 1: assumption of importance as it took the great timberladen catchers
• 2:47:29
  Speaker 1: to their moorings. Or drove the solemn barges one by
• 2:47:33
  Speaker 1: one like sheep into the glittering fold of the canal.
• 2:47:39
  Speaker 1: But here by the old quarry, nature has won back
• 2:47:43
  Speaker 1: even the inconstant river from its busy human impost, and
• 2:47:48
  Speaker 1: the waters seemed to glide past on stealthy tiptoe, hushing
• 2:47:53
  Speaker 1: their noisy turbulence, stilling their chattering tongue. And nowhere else
• 2:48:00
  Speaker 1: shall you find such blackbird music as here in this
• 2:48:04
  Speaker 1: old forgotten eden. Far from the track of men, the
• 2:48:09
  Speaker 1: throstle loves the wayside copse or the hedgerow, where the
• 2:48:14
  Speaker 1: well worn path winds through the meadow green. He sings
• 2:48:19
  Speaker 1: the better for itinerant human company, choosing the loftiest, most
• 2:48:25
  Speaker 1: conspicuous branch, and giving the casual passer by ungrudging melodious
• 2:48:31
  Speaker 1: measure as he sits with his speckled breast turned to
• 2:48:35
  Speaker 1: the full light of day. But the blackbird's song is
• 2:48:39
  Speaker 1: for the wild woodland and unbroken solitudes such as these.
• 2:48:45
  Speaker 1: Yet even here he sings discreetly under cover, looking deep
• 2:48:50
  Speaker 1: in the green leaf twilight, and ready to cut short
• 2:48:54
  Speaker 1: his rich, leisurely chant at sound of the lighter step,
• 2:49:00
  Speaker 1: shyest of all shy birds. His is the last note
• 2:49:05
  Speaker 1: of all to rejoin the symphony so harshly interrupted. But
• 2:49:10
  Speaker 1: now he has begun again over there where the wild
• 2:49:14
  Speaker 1: cherry trees whiten the sunny steep, and his ripe, deliberate
• 2:49:19
  Speaker 1: melody compels attention as no other song has power to do.
• 2:49:26
  Speaker 1: For the Blackbird brings into his music a quality almost
• 2:49:31
  Speaker 1: unique among the songsters of the English woods and hedgerows.
• 2:49:36
  Speaker 1: To say that there is evidence of conscious individual art
• 2:49:40
  Speaker 1: in his performance would be to adventure upon an infinitely
• 2:49:45
  Speaker 1: debatable theme. But at least, sitting here in the cool
• 2:49:50
  Speaker 1: shade of the hawthorn and listening to his mellow, flute
• 2:49:55
  Speaker 1: like strains, you will find it more than difficult to
• 2:49:58
  Speaker 1: set them down mere chance unreasoned melody. The thrush sings
• 2:50:06
  Speaker 1: always at the full power of his clarion throttle. He
• 2:50:10
  Speaker 1: is all for needless repetition. He must have each of
• 2:50:15
  Speaker 1: his blithe, rippling stanzas over and over again, and with
• 2:50:20
  Speaker 1: two monotonous a cheerfulness. But you may listen to the
• 2:50:25
  Speaker 1: Blackbird's song the whole may morning through and never hear
• 2:50:29
  Speaker 1: a single phrase reiterated in its exact original form. The
• 2:50:36
  Speaker 1: Blackbird is ever for ceaseless change in rhythm, time and quality.
• 2:50:42
  Speaker 1: He sings now fast, not slow. Now he gives you
• 2:50:47
  Speaker 1: a whole page of recitative, full of telling pauses and
• 2:50:52
  Speaker 1: grand chiming periods and sudden coruscations of silver sound. Now
• 2:51:00
  Speaker 1: his voice sinks into its lowest, softest register, and the
• 2:51:05
  Speaker 1: complex technique changes to pure quiet, simple tunefulness, plain and unadorned,
• 2:51:14
  Speaker 1: And he never brings any phase of his performance to
• 2:51:18
  Speaker 1: too obvious a finale. The song ends as it begins.
• 2:51:24
  Speaker 1: It is taken up like a half told tale. The
• 2:51:28
  Speaker 1: story has its sweet sway with the musician for a while.
• 2:51:33
  Speaker 1: The next eloquent pause may be broken by something conceived
• 2:51:38
  Speaker 1: in quite a different spirit, or with jingling, mocking peal
• 2:51:44
  Speaker 1: of strident sound, as from a lute cast roughly reverberantly
• 2:51:50
  Speaker 1: to earth. The singer may plunge away into the distant
• 2:51:54
  Speaker 1: covert to be heard no more until the ruddy light
• 2:51:58
  Speaker 1: of evening summon or the woodland choir for the last
• 2:52:02
  Speaker 1: sunset symphony. Down by the river bank, the gaunt timbers
• 2:52:09
  Speaker 1: of what was once a landing stage still rear their
• 2:52:12
  Speaker 1: skeleton fingers, weed grown out of the glistening tide, and
• 2:52:18
  Speaker 1: hard by the quarry watchman must have made his home.
• 2:52:24
  Speaker 1: A ruined cottage stands there in a little garden, yet
• 2:52:28
  Speaker 1: scarce recognizable as human handiwork. So completely has nature done
• 2:52:34
  Speaker 1: her task of reclamation. The sagging roof tree still holds
• 2:52:39
  Speaker 1: up bravely, but the old thatch is fast subsiding under
• 2:52:44
  Speaker 1: its weight of feather, moss and gray gold lichen. From
• 2:52:50
  Speaker 1: afar nothing can be made out but a denser, wilder
• 2:52:54
  Speaker 1: labyrinth of greenery, and overall a drift of alien blossom,
• 2:53:00
  Speaker 1: flushing red in the breathless light at noon. But drawing nearer,
• 2:53:07
  Speaker 1: this unwonted color reveals itself as a maze of old,
• 2:53:11
  Speaker 1: neglected apple trees, free of the pruning knife for half
• 2:53:16
  Speaker 1: a century, and hovering above the little desert homestead like
• 2:53:21
  Speaker 1: a belated cloud of rosy summer dawn. You cannot pass
• 2:53:27
  Speaker 1: the garden gate. The ivy binds it firmly to its posts.
• 2:53:33
  Speaker 1: But beyond you can see a tangle of bright weeds,
• 2:53:37
  Speaker 1: mingling its vager bond beauty with the color of the
• 2:53:41
  Speaker 1: rioting garden things. The honeysuckle over the door porch grown
• 2:53:47
  Speaker 1: into an impassable barrier of fragrance. The old apple bells
• 2:53:52
  Speaker 1: thrusting their pink rosettaed tentacles through every gap in the
• 2:53:56
  Speaker 1: crumbling wall. But it is all going back to Mother
• 2:54:01
  Speaker 1: Earth again, like everything else in the abandoned quarry, tree
• 2:54:07
  Speaker 1: and shrub and garden flower to their original fashioning, the
• 2:54:12
  Speaker 1: very stones of the Footway to their old predestined station
• 2:54:18
  Speaker 1: under the sod end of Chapter twelve and of an
• 2:54:25
  Speaker 1: Idler in the Wilds by Tickner Edwards