THE NEST

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1037, 30 July 1930, Page 14

THE NEST

It was a wonderful morning—a morning mistily blue, and softly golden, and eternally young—a morning of resurrection. Above, the great boughs met and interlaced against the sky, opening out to show an arc of blue heaven, while below tlio great beeches, folded over the roots, stretching up the slope and beyond, was a carpet of shimmering bluebells, vividly blue. Tho little old traveller was weary, and he paused in the shade of the trees, his eyes, deep pools of contemplation, seeming to reflect the colour of the carpet at his feet. Long before the stars had paled he had fared forth on his quest of treasure. searching tirelessly for the things for which he longed. Long years had he journeyed down tho road of life, seeking the treasuro he hoped one day to find. As ho stood lost in dreams, a feathered wayfarer paused on a branch to rest, and surveyed the bluebells with interest, then dropped suddenly to the ground as though to ascertain the origin of such blueness. Somewhere a cuckoo called, and the bird, trying over the phrase, made a tentative remark to the human being standing so still beneath him, then uttered a liquid chuckling note as though in preparation for the choir of thanksgiving he was so soon to join. And, as the little old traveller watched, the bird garnered from the ground a straw, a thread of moss, a wisp of hay, and a withered leaf. and. carrying them to the branches above, added them to those already there. Slowly, piece by piece, the nest neared completion, and the little old traveller forgot his mournful dreams as he watched tho cheerful Industry of the bird. And as he watched, the bluebells seemed to shimmer with beauty in the blazing sunlight. It poured down upon them from a sky of dazzling turquoise, and sprinkled with a myriad dancing points of radiance the surface of the river, as Irresistibly blue as the sky above. A calm radiance of joy and wonder lighted the face of the little old travel,e.r v. “‘The bird has made a nest out or the world’s waste,” he said. “He has taken the things that are close at hand, tho things that no one would deny him. and from these he has made a home. Perhaps the treasure I seek has always been close at hand, in the soft rays of the sunrise, the lining cadences of birdsong at dawn, a shaft of moonlight glittering on a tranquil i<f?’ *>. ut * n my bllndn ess I have passed

And in the branches above the little ,A^ a ’ rejoicing In his completed task, lifted his voice, and shattered the silence with a tumult of music. Green Bough (Norma Joll).