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Nature had to reflect the pleasant indolence of man; the song of the minstrel moved through a perpetual May-time; the grass was ever green; the music of the lark and the nightingale rang out from field and thicket.
The low, sweet breath of the May-time breathed within them, and their hearts were light; hers was only conscious of the May-time, but his was awake with unconscious love, and he yielded to her, to the perfume of the garden, to the absorbing sweetness of the moment. He was no longer John Norton.
No rule fitted it, and yet it had not one fault! It sounded so old, and was yet so new, like the song of birds in the sweet May-time. One who should hear it, and, smitten with madness, try to sing in imitation of that Bird, would meet with scorn and derision.... The law of Spring, exquisite compulsion! according to that were the rules of song laid in his breast. And he sang even as he must!
They seem to be identical with the Lord and Lady, and sometimes to have been merged in Robin Hood and Maid Marian. "Maid Marian fair as ivory bone, Scarlet, and Mutch, and Little John." The King and Queen of May are spoken of in the thirteenth century, but morris-dancing at May-time does not seem to date earlier than Henry VII., and is not so old a custom as the immemorial one of going a-Maying
One day, soon after this home-coming, as he stood with her at an open window into which came blowing the pleasant May-time breeze, he suddenly said, "What didst thou think of me when I first fell almost into thy lap, like an apple from heaven?" "I thought thou wert a great, good-hearted boy, as I think thou art now," said she, twisting his strong, sinewy fingers in and out.
It was in the first week of the queen of months the May-time, that Gregoriev took it into his head to return the oft-repeated, meagre hospitality of the Akheskaia, by giving a birthday supper to Sergius, on the night of the 10th.
For, it is not correct to speak of outliving our passions. We may outlive the passion of young, fresh love, that makes the world a May-time of blossoms and of roses. We may outlive the passion for selfish fame, because some transcendent claim of duty snatches us up to a sublimer level.
Davy was used to this; from a wee boy he had been asked to paint the changing landscape of each day, and to put into words his uncle's music. Lyddy dropped her needle; the birds stopped to listen, and Anthony played. "It is this apple-orchard in May-time," said Davy; "it is the song of the green things growing, isn't it?" "What do say, dear?" asked Anthony, turning to his wife.
And thereafter, for an hour, as they wandered through the May-time sweetness of the forest, she would permit him to talk of only Yellow Bird and Sun Cloud; and, one thing leading to another, she learned how it was that Yellow Bird had been his fairy in childhood days, and how he came to be an outlaw for her in later manhood.
Who worked there together so happily all the May-time, with gray honeysuckle fibres, twining the little nest, until there it hung securely over the road, bound and tied and woven firmly to the slender twigs? so slender that the squirrels even cannot creep down for the eggs; much less can Jack or Neddy, who are so fond of birds'-nesting, ever hope to reach the home of our golden robin.
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