By Robert L. Taylor.
We dream of a heaven beyond the stars, but there are heavens all around
us with beautiful gates ajar to those who have eyes to see and ears to
hear. I have seen heavens of delight where the meadows flashed with dew
and the crows were on the wing. I have seen heavens of music where the
linnet swept her lute and the thrush rang his silver bells in the dusky
chambers of the forest.
I once sat on the grassy brink of a southern stream in the gathering
twilight of evening and listened to a concert of Nature’s musicians who
sang as God hath taught them to sing. The katydid led off with a
trombone solo; the cricket chimed in with his E flat cornet; the
bumble-bee played on his violincello, and the jaybird laughed with his
piccolo. The music rose to grandeur with the deep bass horn of the big
black beetle; the mocking-bird’s flute brought me to tears of rapture,
and the screech-owl’s fife made me want to fight; the tree-frog blew his
alto horn; the jar-fly clashed his tinkling cymbals; the woodpecker
rattled his kettledrum and the locust jingled his tambourine. The music
rolled along like a sparkling river in sweet accompaniment with the
oriole’s leading violin; but it suddenly hushed when I heard a ripple of
laughter among the hollyhocks before the door of a happy country home. I
saw a youth standing there in the shadows holding his sweetheart’s hand
in his. There were a few whispers, tender and low—the lassie vanished in
the cottage—the lad vanished over the hill, and as he vanished he swung
his hat in the shadows and sang back to her his happy love song:
“My thoughts will fly to thee, my own,
Swift as a dove,
To cheer thee when alone,
My own true love.”
And the birds inclined their heads to listen to his song as it died away
on the drowsy evening air.
[Illustration:
I saw a youth holding his sweetheart’s hand.
]