CHAPTER XII

THE MEADOW-LARK

Hark! the lark!

Shakespeare.

Think, every morning when the sun peeps through The dim, leaf-latticed window of the grove. How jubilant the happy birds renew Their old, melodious madrigals of love. And when you think of this, remember too 'Tis always morning somewhere, and above The awakening continents from shore to shore, Somewhere the birds are singing evermore.

Longfellow.

Never did any lark "lean its breast against a thorn" and sing. That was the poet's sorry fancy. Larks are not in the habit of leaning their breasts against anything when they sing. They stand tiptoe on a stout grass stem or a fence-post or the highest bough, or sing as they fly, or warble a simple ditty while running on the ground.

It is on account of this habit of his, always having his song at his tongue's end, that the poets have made the lark the subject of many a moral romance. "His feet are on the earth, while his song is in the sky." "High or low, in joy and pain, warm or cold, wet or dry, sing like the lark." And he is given the credit of "waking up the morning," and also of "tucking in the night," and of "blowing the noon whistle," and all sorts of intermediate duties. He doesn't deserve it all more than other birds, however. But it is the poet who sings as often as the mood takes him. If it be the lark that inspires him at this particular moment, the lark is his theme. Or if it be the raven or the wren or any other winged subject, it is one and the same to the poet.

But country people are all poets. In their hearts they have enshrined the meadow-lark, because he is very near them and gives them little cause to despise him. He has no tooth for fruit or grain, unless he happen to stumble on it unawares. He seems never to seek it, like the sparrows. Resident in many places, even when the snow is up to his knees; in the open field, in the margin of woods, where it is cool and grassy; in damp meadows where the insect people have their summer home; and if food be scarce, even in the barn-yard litter, may the meadow-lark be seen.

Yes, seen and heard! Very often he is heard and not seen. And no one need see him to know him. His song is his passport to everybody's heart. "There's the meadow-lark!" exclaims a white-haired man, bent with much listening and many sorrows, leaning on memory and his strong cane for support. And his eye brightens, as no youthful eye can shine, at sound of the familiar melody. "Yes," he says, "that is the meadow-lark. He's somewhere down in the open. I knew him when I was a boy."

And the old man, who is a boy again, walks weakly off to the nearest field, bent on flushing the comrade of his childhood. He sits feebly down on a log and rests. It is the same log he climbed when he was a boy. It was not horizontal as long ago as that, but perpendicular, and was green-topped and full of orioles' nests. It lies prone on the ground now, long ago cut straight in two at the base. And it has laid there so long it has grown black and mildewed. On account of this mildew, and the toadstools that have ruffled and fluted and bedecked its softened bark, the insect people have made their home in it.

The old man sitting there, waiting for the meadow-lark to appear, thinks not of the insect people, but of the lark. With the tip of his strong cane he breaks off a piece of the serried bark, and a spider scurries down the side of the log and into the grass. He chips off another piece, and a bevy of sow-bugs make haste to tumble over and "play dead," curling their legs under their sides, but recovering their senses and scurrying off after the spider. The cane continues to chip off the bark, and down tumble all sorts of wood people, some of them hiding like a flash in the first moist earth they come to; others never stopping until they are well under the log, where experience has taught them they will be safe out of harm's way. And they declare to themselves, and to each other, that they will never budge from under that log until it is midnight "and that wicked meadow-lark is fast asleep."

Of course it is no other than the meadow-lark the insect people are running away from! They never saw the old man, nor the tip of his cane that was doing all the mischief. They know their feathered foe of old. What care they for his song? He is always on their trail. So when the old man sat down heavily on the log, and the point of his cane jarred the loose bark, out tumbled the tenants, expecting each of them to be presented with a bill. But the bill of their dreaded enemy is a rod or two away.

He has had his breakfast already. It was composed of all sorts of winged and creeping folk, including many an insect infant bundled all up in its swaddling-clothes and not half conscious of its fate.

It was for this very purpose that he was up so early. Of course the poets did not take his breakfast into account when they wrote verses about his "rising with the sun" and singing with "the first beam of day." Nothing in the world brought him out of bed save his ever-present appetite. And the farmers have cause to bless their stars that the meadow-lark has an appetite of his own. Also, that he and his spouse make their nest in the grass, and that the baby larks get about on the ground long before they are able to fly fence-high.

But we are leaving the old man sitting too long on that damp log. He may catch a cold. Of one thing we are certain, he will catch sight of "that rogue lark" if he waits half an hour. He used to wait just that way when he was a boy, though to keep still half as long in any other place for any other purpose would have been a physical impossibility. His specs are on the end of his nose now, for the old man has good far sight, and he squints knowingly at a bunch of meadow-grass three rods away. Who says the eye of the aged grows dim? The eye of this particular old man never shone brighter even when he climbed that identical elm and came near losing his balance, reaching after the orchard oriole's nest that swung, empty, just at tantalizing distance. What did the boy want of that nest? He just wanted to get it, that was all.

And what does the old man want of the meadow-lark caroling at the base of bunch-grass somewhere ahead of him? Why, he just wants his nest, that is all! Suddenly up pops the bird, right out of the waving mound he was "sure to be in," and he flies low to the nearest stone heap, looking the old man right in the eyes as if he had as easy a conscience as ever reposed in the breast of man or bird. And no other conscience has the meadow-lark, to be sure. It is the same conscience that has descended to him through his ancient family down through countless generations.

But the old man isn't after the conscience of the dear bird. He is after what may develop at the base of that grassy mound. Over toward it he goes, feeling with his cane, poking the buttercups and smartweed and yarrow aside. "Ha," he laughs, "I've got it, Mary!"

"Mary" isn't anywhere in sight; but the old man's habit of telling "Mary" everything stands by him like any good friend. He has been telling her everything all his life, and why shouldn't he tell her about this lark's nest, the very latest discovery of his?

No deceiving this old boy! All these meadow-grasses, bent low and forming a rather awkward archway over a possible corridor, hold secrets. Out darts the mother lark with many a sign of maternal anxiety. And the singer discontinues his morning carol.

The old man kneels very stiffly down in the meadow (he thinks he is dropping down with a jerk, in boy fashion) and parts the grasses. He peers in and sees something. He laughs, parting his gums wide, exhibiting to a black and yellow bumblebee a solitary tooth, like the last remaining picket on the garden gate he swung on when he was a boy. Then he rises stiffly, and goes as fast as his legs can carry him, exactly as he has always done for seventy-five years, more or less, straight to "tell Mary."

Just as he reaches the doorstep and places his strong cane against the corner, preparatory to lifting his right foot, he turns to take a look at the spot he has just left, empty-handed, in the meadow. He shades his eye from the nine-o'clock sun, and sees a crouching form no bigger than was his own at the age of ten. He tries to shout, but that one tooth standing in the door of his lips like a faithful sentinel, or something back of and behind it in the years that are gone, prevents his voice from reaching farther than the stone wall at the garden's edge. "Mary," inside, darning hand-knit stockings, hears the voice that is dear to her, lo! these many years; and she does the shouting. Somehow her voice is the stronger of the two. "Get out of that meadow, boy! No stealing lark's eggs in here."

The "boy" slinks back down to the road fence, and bethinks him of another meadow "out of sight of folks," where no end of larks are singing.

When the nesting-season is over--and maybe there were a couple of broods--the larks will club together on a picnic excursion and wander off and on, nobody knows just where. Perchance they will turn up in the next town or the next county or the next state. As they wander, they will sing plaintively, stopping for meals where meals are served. Or they will chatter all together, recognized wherever their happy lot is cast, loved by the loving, perhaps eaten by the sensual.

It will be remembered that the lark was a wedding guest of no ordinary office at the marriage of Cock Robin and Jenny Wren. At the very last feature of the beautiful ceremony the ballad runs this wise:

"Then on her finger fair Cock Robin put the ring, While the lark aloud did sing: 'Happy be the bridegroom, And happy be the bride; And may not man nor bird nor beast This happy pair divide.'"

After the cruel blunder was done, which was the fault of neither bird nor beast nor man (by intention), and the question as to who should act the part of clerk at the last sad burial rites was raised, it was the lark who volunteered, though it is to be supposed that his heart was breaking.

"Who will be the clerk? 'I,' said the lark, 'If it's not in the dark, And I will be the clerk.'"

Now, why the lark should object to doing this very solemn service for his dead friend the robin, if it should happen to be "dark," we cannot tell. Perchance he really couldn't act the part of a clerk at night on account of his family having been forbidden, centuries and centuries ago, to lean any more against the moon in the first quarter. It used to be a habit of theirs to sing that way, and that is how they came by the crescent on their breast. The gods made up their minds that if all the larks in the world took to leaning their breasts against the moon all at one time it would result in toppling the old moon over. The meadow-lark being the last of the family of larks to obey the command, flew away with the shadow of the crescent under his throat. Anybody can see it for himself in plain sight. So, as intimated, the lark at the funeral, remembering that he couldn't have a moon to lean against, refused to do the part asked of him, if the ceremony occurred after dark. Though, come to think of it, this legend about the crescent must be of very recent date, for the lark of the ballad could have been no other than the English skylark, which has no crescent. But the moon has a crescent, and so has our meadow-lark, and so, if there be a grain of truth in the ballad and the legend, our dear singer must have been spirited across the sea for that special occasion.

Our interest in this old ballad of Cock Robin would have died before it began had we not been informed of the whole affair with such precision as to details.

For the benefit of those who doubt the event having ever occurred "within the memory of man" and birds, we will refer our readers to the inscription on a certain very old tomb-stone in Aldermary Churchyard, England. If they do not find a single reference to Cock Robin and the lark which acted the part of clerk at the funeral, it will be because they have left their specs at home. Is is not a well-known fact that tombstones tell no falsehoods?

Thinking all these things very calmly over, it occurs to us that, after all, any other of the singing birds we have mentioned in this book might be as well fitted to act the part allotted to the lark as that bird himself. The plain, everyday facts are, it was a poet who reported the affair, and he was at his wit's end to find a word to rhyme with "clerk," and a clerk he must have at a funeral of that date. Now the English tongue, wherever it is spoken, is a curious language. It seems ready made to suit any figure, stout or slim, big or little. The poet knew that any person of good sense, accustomed to rhyming, would read the word "clerk" to sound like "dark." Hence the immortal rhyme,

"'I,' said the lark, 'If it be not in the dark, And I will be clerk.'"