So
Near Is It To Summer That The First Thrush Begins To Sing At Three
O'clock In The Morning.
THE MAKERS OF SUMMER.
The leaves are starting here and there from green buds on the hedge, but
within doors a warm fire is still necessary, when one day there is a
slight sound in the room, so peculiar, and yet so long forgotten, that
though we know what it is, we have to look at the object before we can
name it. It is a house-fly, woke up from his winter sleep, on his way
across to the window-pane, where he will buzz feebly for a little while
in the sunshine, flourishing best like a hothouse plant under glass.
By-and-by he takes a turn or two under the centrepiece, and finally
settles on the ceiling. Then, one or two other little flies of a
different species may be seen on the sash; and in a little while the
spiders begin to work, and their round silky cocoons are discovered in
warm corners of the woodwork. Spiders run about the floors and spin
threads by the landing windows; where there are webs it is certain the
prey is about, though not perhaps noticed. Next, some one finds a moth.
Poor moth! he has to suffer for being found out.
As it grows dusk the bats flitter to and fro by the house; there are
moths, then, abroad for them. Upon the cucumber frame in the sunshine
perhaps there may be seen an ant or two, almost the first out of the
nest; the frame is warm. There are flowers open, despite the cold wind
and sunless sky; and as these are fertilised by insects, it follows that
there must be more winged creatures about than we are conscious of. How
strange it seems, on a bleak spring day, to see the beautiful pink
blossom of the apricot or peach covering the grey wall with
colour - snowflakes in the air at the time! Bright petals are so
associated with bright sunshine that this seems backward and
inexplicable, till it is remembered that the flower probably opens at the
time nearest to that which in its own country brings forth the insects
that frequent it. Now and again humble-bees go by with a burr; and it is
curious to see the largest of them all, the big bombus, hanging to the
little green gooseberry blossom. Hive-bees, too, are abroad with every
stray gleam of sun; and perhaps now and then a drone-fly - last seen on
the blossoms of the ivy in November. A yellow butterfly, a white one,
afterwards a tortoiseshell - then a sudden pause, and no more butterflies
for some time. The rain comes down, and the gay world is blotted out. The
wind shifts to the south, and in a few days the first swallows are seen
and welcomed, but, as the old proverb says, they do not make a summer.
Nor do the long-drawn notes of the nightingale, nor even the jolly
cuckoo, nor the tree pipit, no, nor even the soft coo of the turtle-dove
and the smell of the May flower.
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