You Must Imagine It Given The Power
To Rise Over Hedges, To Make Short Angles About Buildings, Slip Between
The
Trunks of trees, to avoid moving objects, as men or animals, not to
come in contact with other animated arrows,
And by some mysterious
instinct to know what is or what is not out of sight on the other side of
the wall. I was sitting on a log in the narrowest of narrow lanes, a
hedge at the back, in front thick fir trees, whose boughs touched the
ground, almost within reach, the lane being nothing more than a broader
footpath. It was one of those overcast days when the shelter of the hedge
and the furze was pleasant in July. Suddenly a swallow slid by me as it
seemed underneath my very hands, so close to the ground that he almost
travelled in the rut, the least movement on my part would have stopped
him. Almost before I could lift my head he had reached the end of the
lane and rose over the gate into the road - not a moments pause before he
made that leap over the gate to see if there was a waggon or not in the
way; a waggon-load of hay would have blocked the road entirely. How did
he know that a man or a horse would not step into his course at the
instant he topped the bar?
A swallow never hesitates, never looks before he leaps, threads all day
the eyes of needles, and goes on from half-past two in the morning till
ten at night, without so much as disturbing a feather.
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