SWALLOWS Songs of the Fields F the forest is the Temple of God, the fields I arouses a sleeping earth they are painted in Field one great, ever-shifting panorama that stretches Music beyond our vision, and the world is filled with the songs of nature. Because we love this music above all other we rejoice that a few old-fashioned fields remain to be flooded with such melody in its proper environment. Here, dotted with wild trees and outlined with lichen and vine-covered old snakefences, every corner of which is filled with shrubs and bushes sheltering singing birds and insects, the great song festival of the fields is held. Here the old-time content with life is voiced from cabin homes, and the forest towering high above affords shelter and protection, and balances the forces of nature. These old farms, forest-guarded, walled by growth and moisture, resounding with birdsong and trampled with scudding feet, all of these have two owners. One is the man who pays Fields the taxes and keeps up the fences; the other is the woman with the camera, who coolly lays down enclosures and trespasses where fancy leads. Every such farm on the face of earth is mine, also the birds, moths, and animals that it attracts. It is undying glory to own these old cabins, the orchards that surround them, the gardens, stable lots, wood-yards, truck patches, grain fields, pastures, creeks, ponds, little hints that remind you of real forest, stretches of river, thickets, and all the insects, bird, and animal life. These farmers do not know there is another claimant to their land. They think the title is clear. No one has taught them, innocent souls as they are, that they are monopolizing all the beauty to be found in the landscape, and that beauty "lies in the eye of the beholder," and therefore it is the property of all who see and claim it for their own. My old fields lay stretched in warm spring sunshine, mellowing slowly; for in the shelter of Old- the forest they have not frozen and thawed repeatfashioned edly, as when unprotected, so the wheat crop is sure. Among last year's stubble great velvety mulleins stretch soft green leaves, and thistles prove how hardy they are. The pasture shows living green all over, and as soon as it is firm enough to bear the weight of stock the cattle that bellow disconsolately in the barnyard on dry feed will race to it like mad things. "Dear common flower, that grow'st beside the way, Which children pluck, and, full of pride uphold, An Eldorado in the grass have found -Lowell. |