Part 20

(Written during the spring-like days of October, 1921, when the prolonged drought had been broken by the rains following the equinoctial gales.)

Some happy goldfinches flew twittering to the loosened thistle-heads on the sward of the promontory. Their wings fluttered as they took the seeds; they were timorous of alighting on the down, such a soft couch it was, too; their lives were wild and restless. Soon the flock rose and went to other haunts. The brief visitation gave me time to observe the crimson faces, the yellow bars on the wings--they were gone, and I was alone with the spirit of the apple blossom and the blue sky. On the trees of the inland orchards the ungathered apples were ready to fall. Goldfinches always associate themselves in my mind with the May month, when their nests are in the apple trees, but it is only when summer is gone that the wild beauty of spring--apple bloom time--is yearned for. The goldfinches that now flocked to the headland for the thistledown brought with them a thought of blossom.

For Proserpine has returned--with a child-god in her arms. The nuts in the lane are ready for gathering, the blackberries are luscious, and the partridge coveys have been broken up many weeks. On the ledges of their precipice colony the gulls are no more, the swallows have followed the sun. Many times have I searched the flawless bell-flower of the sky for these ragtailed vagrants, but not even one is to be seen. I cannot understand it; my heart is heavy. Why have they gone so suddenly? The sun shines, and insects are plentiful. Usually the hosts foregather on the single telegraph wire that never ceases to hum between the sun-bleached posts in the sunken lane. This autumn there were no preparations for the great southerly flight. One night, in the quiet starlight, they disappeared, speeding down the silver stain of the Milky Way towards the big lantern star Fomalhaut. Did they flee the coming of the spring goddess? Other things have welcomed her. The lesser celandine flowers are in the hedge-banks, the sorrel is rising, the wild arum will shortly show its purple club in the green sheath, pink campion is blooming. Proserpine, the goddess of spring, has returned to see how her children are faring; and a little child-god is in her arms. With her, too, is the spirit of the apple blossom, symbolling felicity, whispered to me by those fairy heralds, the goldfinches; the loved swallows have not waited to see her. Again I wonder to myself if the penalty of meeting an Immortal is death. Dear swallows, already they brave much during their migrations--the storms, the waves, and the electric wires erected by a debased portion of humanity along their airlines.

The bracken upon the headland has rusted, and the gorse is brown and sapless. Never has there been such an untarnished sky fused with the sea. Those stately swans, the clouds, have sailed over the marge of the earth, leaving not even a downy feather to tell of their heavenly passage. Somewhere in a brake of blackthorn a robin sings frailly, while a red kestrel hangs above for sight of vole or mouse. Croaking deeply a raven wings towards a gully in the mainland where the shepherd pitches his dead sheep. The robin is quiet, and there is no other sound except the croak of the carrion raven: only the mellow sun of autumn, and the grape-frosty air, and the silence. But listen! that sweet birdsong must surely be of the nightingale. There is the low trill, the fluting cadence, the reedy melody that sinks away into silence. But the nightingale does not come to the West Country; only in my mind do I listen to the old and loved voice. The song of the nightingale is so joyous, so essentially pure spirit, that the listening heart feels an emotion beyond that of earthly life. It is passion more chaste than any Hellenic ideal--it is the voice of the wind, the meaning of the green leaf, the purpose of the seed, the secret of the star. But now as I listen the wistful song, only a little less perfect than Philomel’s own, brings poignantly the present before me. However I would dream, it is now October; I can read The Pageant of Summer during the dreariness of autumn’s chill and winter’s murk; but it is not the same. Change is bitter to me, whether of falling leaf or friendship. Leaves must fall, but friends can be steadfast; yet everywhere is bitter change. For many days now the voice has run through the grape-frosty air; always the voice, but never sight of the singer. For hours and days I have sought to find the singing bird, but in vain, in vain. There is genius in the song--a hymn to the life-giving sun, to the light. Somewhere a rabbit screams in an iron gin; the bird sings on.

Gone is the evejar, that weird moth-taker who pairs for life. By the Nile, with the cuckoo, the nightingale, and the swift, he flaps his mottled wings. The jackdaws and the curlews are with me; there is the seal four hundred feet below hunting the conger-eel come back to the deep pools. Of his summer diet of dogfish he must have wearied by now. The orange hawkbits are everywhere at my feet--common weeds, perhaps, but very dear: each yields a thought of beauty, each is a gold coin of our true heritage of the earth. The metal coin that they stamp with the die is false; I would have all the children of the earth spend the dandelions. Therein lies our hope--in the wild-flower and the sunlight, in what they symbol--let the children spend these. The more they spend, the richer they will be. They will never forget the flowers: and to remember them is to yearn towards goodness and beauty. Like the migrants that return, so the impressions of childhood come back to us. And like the swallows that every year grow scarcer, so every generation of man has more to contend with in heredity. This is the price we pay for our metal gold. Let us spend the golden treasure of the dandelions, now, on earth, while we may; so that those to follow may enjoy a more sunlit life. Sitting on the sward above the still blue sea, listening to the sadly-sweet song of the unknown, drinking the grape-frosty air, thus I meditated; perhaps Proserpine had paused in her wandering and whispered to a lonely mortal.

STRIX FLAMMEA

“Where man goes nature ends,” wrote Richard Jefferies. But the wild creatures cling to their ancient places with stubbornness, especially in and around London.

One day in summer, intolerably weary, I left Fleet Street very late--or very early. The morning star, Eosphoros the Light-bringer, was sweeping above the eastern line of buildings, the spectral dawn flooding into the concave dusk above. Pausing by the Temple Gardens near the Embankment I became aware of glints of sound from the lawns and under the trees, the cries of questing mice. Then something indistinctly white and with great winnowing wings went over, fluttered vaguely to the grass, rose again, and drifted away. Strix Flammea was in London, hunting in the very heart of its turmoil. My fatigue passed, and hope came into my heart: I would be as indifferent to my surroundings as my barn owl was to them!

There are owls in the city at night, but never before had I known Strix Flammea visiting. The quavering and mournful plaint of the wood or brown owl has often been heard in Hyde Park and St. James’s Park during the darkness. Once, from the top of a motor-bus, I saw one roosting in a chimney cowl near Marble Arch. He looked forlorn in such a neighbourhood. Such a strange object naturally caused many cockney sparrows to assemble for communal vituperation.

Unlike other birds, owls cannot exist where there is noise. Most of their hunting is done by sound, detected by the ultra-sensitive and enormous cavities in the sides of their head, much larger than their eyes.

Maybe you will see Strix Flammea as he floats, a great moth of a bird, round the ancient wharves and docks of London Bridge. But it will be in the forsaken silence of the morning, when the traffic of the streets is stilled and few people are about, except the human derelicts huddled by London’s river and an occasional poet enraptured at life’s beauty.

GLASGOW: W. COLLINS SONS AND CO. LTD.

Messrs.

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