For The Birds, Too, Loved The Shelter Which Had Enabled Them To
Live Through That Great Frost; And They Were Now Recovering Their
Voices; And Whenever The Wind Lulled And A Gleam Of Sunshine Fell From
The Grey Sky, They Were Singing From End To End Of The Long Street.
Listening to, and in some instances seeing the singers and counting
them, I found that there were two thrushes,
Four blackbirds, several
chaffinches and green finches, one pair of goldfinches, half-a-dozen
linnets and three or four yellow-hammers; a sprinkling of hedge-
sparrows, robins and wrens all along the street; and finally, one
skylark from a field close by would rise and sing at a considerable
height directly above the road. Gazing up at the lark and putting
myself in his place, the village beneath with its one long street
appeared as a vari-coloured band lying across the pale earth. There
were dark and bright spots, lines and streaks, of yew and holly, red or
white cottage walls and pale yellow thatch; and the plots and gardens
were like large reticulated mottlings. Each had its centre of human
life with life of bird and beast, and the centres were in touch with
one another, connected like a row of children linked together by their
hands; all together forming one organism, instinct with one life, moved
by one mind, like a many-coloured serpent lying at rest, extended at
full length upon the ground.
I imagined the case of a cottager at one end of the village occupied in
chopping up a tough piece of wood or stump and accidentally letting
fall his heavy sharp axe on to his foot, inflicting a grievous wound.
The tidings of the accident would fly from mouth to mouth to the other
extremity of the village, a mile distant; not only would every
individual quickly know of it, but have at the same time a vivid mental
image of his fellow villager at the moment of his misadventure, the
sharp glittering axe falling on to his foot, the red blood flowing from
the wound; and he would at the same time feel the wound in his own
foot, and the shock to his system.
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