So the earth is growing green again, and love is come again unto the
hearts of us old sober-coated fellows. Oh, Madam, your feathers
gleam wondrous black, and your bonnie bright eye stabs deep. Come,
sit by our side, and we'll tell you a tale such as rook never told
before. It's the tale of a nest in a topmost bough, that sways in
the good west wind. It's strong without, but it's soft within,
where the little green eggs lie safe. And there sits in that nest a
lady sweet, and she caws with joy, for, afar, she sees the rook she
loves the best. Oh, he has been east, and he has been west, and his
crop it is full of worms and slugs, and they are all for her.
We are old, old rooks, so many of us. The white is mingling with
the purple black upon our breasts. We have seen these tall elms
grow from saplings; we have seen the old trees fall and die. Yet
each season come to us again the young thoughts. So we mate and
build and gather that again our old, old hearts may quiver to the
thin cry of our newborn.
Mother Nature has but one care, the children. We talk of Love as
the Lord of Life: it is but the Minister. Our novels end where
Nature's tale begins. The drama that our curtain falls upon, is but
the prologue to her play.
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