A moment, and there seemed a strain of angelic utterance, but it was not sustained, and you turn away disappointed at a more homely song which would otherwise have pleased you well. You do not look for Seraph notes in the hedge-sparrow’s song, or the wren’s chatting, and so you are well content with these. But high hopes unfulfilled become disappointment, and you feel an injury in having to resign the exalted idea which you had taken up; until, at last you see _yourself_ in the sweet, but unequal and inadequate song; and learn to reverence and to love the ever-failing and unsustained effort after higher things. Thus, ay thus, do you aim high, and ever fall below your aim; there is one touch of heaven, and a hundred of earth, in the broken and unsustained song of your life; and yet you would rather strive with hopeless yearning after the nightingale’s music, than acquiesce content with the lesser warblings, which accomplish the less that they attempted. Sing on, then, little bird, to an answering heart! In your song I read the rises and falls, the endeavours and failings, the aspirings and rare glimpses of attainment, which are the sweet exceptions, and the commonplace and every-day Christianity, which is the rule, of a life that would fain become the song of an Angel, but that scarce reaches the homeliest warble of the simplest wayside bird. Let us aim high, if we still fall below our passionate striving; let us never acquiesce quietly in less than Perfection; hereafter--who knows? who knows?
It is evening now, as we wend our way home. A thin sickle of light is barred by the slender topmost ash twigs, and the sky is deepening to that cold, clear dusk, that foreruns twilight. We hear a quiet song, far away--the Woodlark’s note always seems far away--you would have asked me the name of the not-generally-familiar songster, but I have just given it. “_That_, the woodlark? Well, I never heard, or never noticed it before” I dare say. But if is a quiet, saintly song; a heavenly voice, serene and clear, never passionate: a twilight, still, calm song, removed far away from the world’s bustle, and deeply imbued with wisdom and melody from a Land far beyond this eager fevered strife. It is not glad, nor sorrowful; nor so much thoughtful as spiritual. It images to us that life which, separated from the world, is yet not ascetic; unobtrusive, yet fascinating when once perceived and heeded; simple, somewhat as is the language of St. John, but with unfathomable suggestions and revelations when you come to study and learn it. Quite away from controversy and strife, there is in it a divine peace, an entranced contemplation, a serene and peaceful uplifting of the soul. Perhaps the writings of Archbishop Leighton best give words to my ideal of the woodlark’s song.