The last few days of warmth and
sunshine have inspired the birds, and as Francesca and I sit at our
windows breathing in the sweetness and freshness of the morning,
there is a concert of thrushes and blackbirds in the shrubberies.
The little birds furnish the chorus or the undertone of song, the
hedge-sparrows, redbreasts, and chaffinches, but the meistersingers
'call the tune,' and lead the feathered orchestra with clear and
certain notes. It is a golden time for the minstrels, for nest-
building is finished, and the feeding of the younglings a good time
yet in the future. We can see one little brown lady hovering warm
eggs under her breast, her bright eyes peeping through a screen of
leaves as she glances up at her singing lord, pouring out his thanks
for the morning sun. There is only a hint of breeze, it might
almost be the whisper of uncurling fern fronds, but soft as it is,
it stirs the branches here and there, and I know that it is rocking
hundreds of tiny cradles in the forest.
When I was always painting in those other days before I met Himself,
one might think my eyes would have been even keener to see beauty
than now, when my brushes are more seldom used; but it is not so.
There is something, deep hidden in my consciousness, that makes all
loveliness lovelier, that helps me to interpret it in a different
and in a larger sense. I have a feeling that I have been lifted out
of the individual and given my true place in the general scheme of
the universe, and, in some subtle way that I can hardly explain, I
am more nearly related to all things good, beautiful, and true than
I was when I was wholly an artist, and therefore less a woman.
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