The Burdens of Belief and Other Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

How oft in sickness when the languid brain
Longed for the freshness of a summer wood,
And the tired reason could not bear the strain
Of ordered thinking which before it stood,
Have I, so longing, just re-read the page
Of him who wrote of Selborne and its birds,
To whom through years of slow and peaceful age
Did kindly Nature whisper all her words,

Of spring, and summer, and of autumn sheaves,
Of strange soft days in winter out of place,
When wakened swallows flew without the leaves,
And stranger wings had lit in Wolmer chace.

II

Then saw I once again with dreamy eyes
The great broad shadows close the evening light,
Waking the Dor-hawk to his dewy skies
And those strange sounds that he doth make at night.
I heard from high and fleecy midnight cloud
How piping cry of ‘Great Grey Plover’ told
Faint, and more faint, though first it sounded loud,
Of his quick flight to some far distant Wold.
Then the sweet odours from the ‘Hanger’ came
As beechen leaves unfolded tender green,
Till fancy breathed through all my wearied frame
The air of spring, and all its flowers were seen.

III

And from the tall tree tops one rapid note
Was shaken out with quivering wings of joy
From upward bill, and from a silver throat,
As once it rained upon me when a boy.

Again I saw the well-remembered trees
Whose sunlit foliage seemed with life on fire;
And whence I heard, new floating on the breeze,
The song that he first added to the choir
Of warbler birds that now we call our own,—
Familiar birds that make our woodland ways
So rich in song, so sweet in varied tone,
And charm the morning of our summer days.
But this shy bird had ever lived on high,
So far removed from common sight of men,
So like the light and shimmers of the sky,
They did not know the ‘Larger Willow Wren’—
Of three fair sister-birds the fairest one,
Pale primrose yellows touched its slender form;
Yet o'er its breast the purest silver won,
Most fairy bird that fronts the vernal storm.

Gilbert White was the first discoverer of the larger Willow Wren—now more commonly known as the ‘Wood Wren,’ or (more locally) as the ‘Beech Wren’ (Sylvia sylvicola, Yarrell). This discovery was communicated to Thomas Pennant in a letter dated August 17, 1768, in which he says that he had then before him all the three species of Willow Wren, and describes them severally, both as to plumage and as to song. ‘Shivering a little with its wings when it sings,’ are the words in which he refers to the Wood Wren—a peculiarity to which I have alluded in these verses. The ‘Harvest Mouse’ was another discovery of this eminent naturalist.

IV

And so I turned and turned again the leaves
Of that old record of a charmèd house,
Saw the weird bats fast dropping from the eaves,
Or climbed the wheat-stalks with the ‘Harvest Mouse.’

Until my wearied eyes were ciosed in sleep,
And woke refreshed as when the night is done,
Saw with fresh health the morning sunbeams sweep,
And heard at dusk the Portsmouth evening gun.
And so in every English-speaking land
The name of this dear Selborne stands in light.
For Nature's voice and all her bounteous hand
Still sings and plays to men through Gilbert White.