COUNTRY LIFE
FIRST heard the blackbird in full song this season on February 18th, during a stormy Sunday evening. Every year I decide that this is the must superb and serene music in nature's repertoire, exceeded in fullness nly by the best of human-made music.
" Oh Blackbird, what a boy you are ; How you do go it ! "
And so he does, with his crocus-coloured oboe tilted to the sky. Such music, at such an hour, was almost more than I could bear: for Sunday evening in the country, with the lin-lanning of distant church hells, the light going down into the west, the melancholy of all England's past history glowing through the evening mood of the landscape ; this in itself is enough for the imagination to absorb. When, over that, I heard this first outburst from the topmost twig of a pine, clear and cold, entreating yet defiant, 1 felt myself defeated by my own emotions. I wanted to cry out "Stop ! " But the show went on in spite of my inadequacy.
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