There are two voices that are most familiar to me on this hillside. One is
the voice of the day, the other of the night. Throughout the day the robin
sings his song with unflagging spirit. It is not a very brilliant song, but
it is indomitably cheerful. Wet or fine, warm or cold, it goes on through
the November day from sunrise to sunset. The little fellow hops about, in
his bright red waistcoat, from tree to tree. He flutters to the fence, and
from the fence to the garden path, and so to the door and into the kitchen.
If you will give him decent encouragement he will come on to your hand and
take his meal with absolute confidence in your good faith. Then he will
trip away and resume his song on the fence.
There are some people who say hard things about the robin--that he is
selfish and "gey ill to live wi'" and so on--but to me he seems the most
cheerful and constant companion in nature. He is a bringer of good
tidings--a philosopher who insists that we are masters of our fate and that
winter is just the time when there is some sense in being an optimist.
Anybody, he seems to say, can be an optimist when the days are long and the
air is warm and worms are plentiful; but it is just when things are looking
a little black and the other fellows begin to grouse that I put on my
brightest waistcoat, tune up my best whistle, and come and tell you that
the unconquerable soul is greater than circumstance.
The other voice comes when night has descended and the valley below is
blotted out by the darkness. Then from the copse beyond the orchard there
sounds the mournful threnody of the owl. The day is over, he says, and all
is lost. "Tu-whit, tu-whoo." I only am left to tell the end of all things.
"Tu-whit, tu-whoo." I've told it all before a thousand times, but you
wouldn't believe me. "Tu-whit, tu-whoo." Now, you can't deny it, for the
night is dark and the wind is cold and all the earth is a graveyard.
"Tu-whit, tu-whoo." Where are the songs of spring and the leaves of summer?
"Tu-whit, tu-whoo." Where the red-cheeked apple that hung on the bough and
the butterfly that fluttered in the sunshine? All, all are gone. "Tu-whit,
tu-whoo ... Tu-whit, tu-whoo ... Tu-whit, tu-whoo...."
A cheerless fellow. Some people find him an intolerable companion. I was
talking at dinner in London a few nights ago to a woman who has a house in
Sussex, and I found that she had not been there for some time.
"I used to find the owl endurable," said she, "but since the war I have
found him unbearable. He hoots all night and makes me so depressed that I
feel that I shall go mad."
"And so you come and listen to the owl in London?" I said.
"The owl in London?" she asked.
"Yes," I said, "the owl that hoots in Carmelite Street and Printing House
Square."
"Ah," she said, "but he is such an absurd owl. Now the owl down in the
country is such a solemn creature."
"He says a very foolish thing
In such a solemn way,"