Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 1).djvu/332

 locusts as the falcons on the herons, and the bee-eater falling through the bright air on his prey, and the green woodpecker drilling a citadel for himself in the stem of a dwarf cork tree and the hoopoes patiently following the buffaloes' slow march, and the blue nut-thatch holding his seed beneath his claw as a dog holds a bone under his foot, and his cousins the sittæ of the rosy tails descending tree trunks head foremost, and the woodlark making music, from a tuft of rosemary or broom, clearer and sweeter than the love-songs of any lute; and with these countless others, too many to name the half of, and Philomel herself for ever pouring her heart out in rapture, as she does all day long and all night long from the first Lenten lily to the last midsummer rose.

Altogether they made such a jocund company upon these unknown and silent wastes that it was the saddest pity that Milton and Shakespeare and Shelley could not awake and come and hear. Oftentimes in such a place one longs for them, and wonders as the children wonder of the flowers that die with summer—where are they gone?

She had the heaven-born faculty of observation of the poets, and she had that