The ivy is the last of the
plants to flower, and insects come to it as from the ends of the earth
in rejoicing myriads. Among the berries in the hedges the birds, too,
rejoice. The robin, though for the most part, I believe, a meat-eater,
becomes unambiguously happy at this time of year. He has usurped the
morning, and, while one is lying in bed, he is boasting in the trees
outside where the thrush and the blackbird will in a few months be
boasting with their scarcely more beautiful voices. I am half
persuaded that his song becomes different at this season. As he sits
and sways on the top of a cypress and looks down on a rich and eatable
world, he seems to have cast every note of pensive sadness out of his
being and to sing aloud the rapture of a happy stomach. He is no
longer the singer of elegy but of ecstasy. He is as unlike his old
simple, friendly, appealing, pathetic self as a beggar who has come
into a fortune. He actually swaggers, and, as he does so, he can fill
a garden or a wood at the end of October with the pleasure of spring.
The large titmouse in its dark cap, and the blue-tit, almost too
pretty for an English winter in its blue and yellow coat, also hasten
to the feast of the berries. I do not know whether, under the iron
reign of high prices, people have ceased to hang out coco-nuts in
their gardens for the blue-tits; at present, fortunately, the berries
are abundant, and it is pleasant to see a tit venture to the edge of
the road in quest of one and then fly off into hiding, like a thief,
with a red ball in his beak.
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