Edmund Selous

“ Oh, how interesting it would be to see it—to find out one of those little, open places where the moss is all pressed smooth and firm, and then to hide somewhere near, and wait there quietly, quietly, without making a sound, all alone in the great, wild, lonely forest, until at last—at last—there is a crimson flash amongst the tree-trunks, and then another and another and another, as bird after bird comes flying or walking to the ball-room, and the dance begins. ”

“ So the flowers prayed to the sun from whom they have their beautiful colours, and the sun made them like jewels—jewels of the rose and the violet, of the lily and the daffodil, the sunflower, the pink and carnation. Perhaps they were not just the same flowers as those, for they grew in America, but they had all their colours and many more. “That is an improvement certainly,” said the Humming-bird, when he had looked at them. “You are much more beautiful now, but you remain the same all day long. It is very different with the sky. ”

“ Oh never, never wish to see a dead Bird of Paradise in a hat, when you can see a living thrush or blackbird on the lawn of your garden, or a living swallow flying over it. And even if you can never see a living Bird of Paradise—as I daresay you never will be able to—what then?—what then? You cannot see everything, but have you not got an imagination (your mother, who has got one, will tell you what it is) , and is it not better to imagine a beautiful bird flying about in life and loveliness than to see it dead? ”

“ We will struggle together, and we will see which is the strongest.” So they came, those blues of wonder, from the violet, the turquoise, the sapphire, and the amethyst—yes, and from the sky, the stars, and the sea as well—and they fell in a glory on that glorious green that had been there before them, and fought with it to possess the breast of that Humming-bird. And they are fighting to possess it now. They gleam and flash and sparkle and glow, and try to out-glory each other; but I think that that wonderful green is the strongest, although he has such a lot of blues to fight against. ”

“ This crest is just the shape of a tea-cosy, so that it looks as if some one had put a little tea-cosy made of the most splendid blood-red, fiery, crimson-sunset feathers right over the bird's head and covered it quite up. You see no beak at all, and it does look so funny to see a bird without a beak—almost as funny as it would to see a beak without a bird. ”

“ Then, do you think he is a bird that ought to be killed and killed and killed, only to have those beautiful, bronzy-black crests, and satiny-green, gleaming shields of his set in hats where they soon get dull and dusty, and where he can never raise them up or shoot them out or pay proper attention to them—because he is dead, dead, dead? Is he to be killed and killed till he is gone for ever, and there is not one more beautiful Black Bird of Paradise in the whole world? ”

“ It is dead beauty then; the beauty of life—which is the highest beauty of all—is gone out of them.
Now you can see many and many beautiful things that never had life in them, though some, such as beautiful statues and pictures, imitate life so marvellously that you would almost think they were alive. And you can admire these beautiful things, and take pleasure in looking at them, without having to feel sorry that they once were alive and happy, but have been killed for you to look at. Surely you would not wish a beautiful, happy bird to be killed, just for you to look at. ”

“ But if you had wings like the Birds of Paradise, and could fly over the tops of the trees that make the forest, and look down into a leafy meadow instead of up into a leafy sky, then you would see the most gloriously beautiful flowers growing in that meadow, just as the daisies and buttercups grow in the meadows that you run over, here. For flowers love the light of the sun, and they struggle up into it through the leaves that keep it out. ”

“ The beautiful house does not look like a beautiful house at all to most people, and the angel of light who sits in the open doorway seems to them to be only a shabbily dressed, unfashionable sort of person. Nobody sees his wings, or, if they do, they think wings are vulgar and out of date. It is the demon who is to blame for this. He has had time to blow his magic powders all about the world, and they have blinded people's eyes and made what is really beautiful seem mean and ugly to them—for the demon's powders can blind the eyes as well as freeze the heart. ”

“ And there are some, too, that are only white, but so lovely that all the flowers of all the colours that there are, gaze at them and envy them. Some are so soft and delicate that, although you see them, you only seem to be dreaming of them. They make you think of heaven, and it is as if angels were kissing you. Others are like golden stars, with a stem that is like a long, long, very long piece of red string that goes tying itself round and round a great many trees, and climbing up and up them, and all the way up there are bright green leaves and the beautiful golden stars. ”

“ Perhaps there may be a dozen Great Birds of Paradise, all bowing their heads and quivering their plumes, on a dozen branches of the tree, whilst a dozen more will be flying about from one branch to another, so that the tree and the air are full of beauty. The air never had anything to float upon her softer or lovelier than those golden floating plumes, and no tree ever bore blossoms quite so beautiful as those wonderful golden Paradise-flowers. ”

“ It would be difficult, surely, to find a handsomer bird, but the Thrush, with his lovely speckled breast, is just as handsome. Then the Robin with his crimson breast, and his little round ball of a body—what bird could be prettier? Or the Chaffinch, or Greenfinch, or Linnet? Or the Bullfinch, surely he is handsomer than all of them (except the star-bird) , with his beautiful mauve-peach-cherry-crimson breast, and his coal-black head and nice fat beak, and that pleasant, saucy look that he has. Yes, he is the handsomest, unless—oh, just fancy! ”

“ People like much better to see that beautiful tail in their rooms, where it will soon get spoilt and dusty, or to put some feathers of it in their hats, than to know that the bird is running about with it, alive and happy, holding it down like a pheasant's when he walks through the bushes, but raising it in the air when he stands on his little hillock, for the hen Lyre-bird to see, and singing her a song as well. ”

“ It could only be a demon—that same little demon that I told you about who sang a charm to send the Goddess of Pity to sleep and then froze the hearts of the women with his bad, wicked powder. That wretched little demon who wears the magic suit of clothes, which makes him seem all that he ought to be, is always killing the poor Birds of Paradise, just when they are feeling so happy and looking so beautiful. ”

“ The Birds of Paradise fly very well—quite well enough—but still there is nothing extraordinary in the way they fly. But the little Humming-birds dart about quite like lightning, and move their wings so fast that, when you look at them, they do not seem to be wings at all, but only two little hazy patches in the air, with a bright jewel between them, which is the gleaming breast of the Humming-bird. ”

“ That is the difference between life and death. A live Bird of Paradise is hundreds [Pg 53] of times more beautiful than a live blackbird or thrush or swallow or robin-redbreast, but when it is dead it is not so beautiful as they are. Its feathers are more beautiful, still, of course, but where are the waving feathers, the floating plumes, the bright eyes, the quick, graceful movements, and the flight—the glorious flight—of a bird. They are gone, they are gone for ever, and, in their place, there is only stiffness and deadness and dustiness. ”

“ The very sun himself has flashed out from his throat, from his gorget—yes, a little flake of the sun, a sunflake instead of a snowflake. Oh, it is such a gorget, a gorget of golden topaz, of coppery gold, of green gold, of silver gold, of silver, of gleaming white, of all these together, and it spreads out on each side like a wonderful fan, and shoots out in front of all the other feathers. ”

“ Kill the birds and tear off their wings, their tails, their bright breasts and heads to sew into our hats or onto the sleeves and collars of our gowns and mantles. Kill them and bring them to us, that you may think us even more lovely than you have done before, when you compare our beauty with theirs and find that ours is the greater. Let us shine down the birds, for they are conceited and think themselves our rivals. ”

“ The bird himself is almost hidden in his own shower-bath, but the emerald throat and the yellow-plush head look out of it and gleam like jewels as he peeps and peers about from side to side to see if any one is looking at him. For, of course, the Great Bird of Paradise does not make himself so very beautiful just for nothing. ”

“ As it is, we must either sing or be silent. We do not like to sit silent, and when we sing we think only of Paradise.” “Yes,” said the Phenix, “I will take your voice, your beautiful voice of song.” So he took it, and that is why the Birds of Paradise never sing at all now, not even as the lark and the nightingale sing.
After that they were happier, but still they had their great beauty, their glorious, glorious plumage, and when they looked at each other they felt sad and hung their heads, for still they thought of Paradise. ”

“ Bird of Paradise whose feathers are really and truly blue, and I am quite sure that there is no other one—at least that we know of—which has so much blue about it, that you would think of it as a blue bird, or that has blue feather-fountains—those wonderful long silky plumes that grow out of each side under the wings.
That is what is most wonderful in the Blue Bird of Paradise. There is no other Bird of Paradise that can sit under a blue fountain or look out of a blue sunset. ”

“ That is what a Black Bird of Paradise is like, like a black diamond, like a cavern with a fire lighted in it, like a dark night with flashes of lightning.
But now I will tell you a little more about his appearance, for this that I have told you is only just to give you an idea of how that wonderful material, from which Dame Nature with her scissors cuts out all her children (for all things that are alive are the children of Dame Nature) , can be black, and yet have all sorts of colours in it at the same time. ”

“ But now the rain is beginning to fall, and it comes down faster and faster, and there is a muttering in the dull sky, and, all at once, a flash of lightning leaps out of the darkness, cutting it as though with a red, jagged knife, and for an instant it is day, and you see the leaves on the trees, and the rain-drops falling through the air, and the fields with haystacks standing in them, or rivers winding through them, and the distant hills, and the line where the earth meets the heavens. ”

“ Ah, there is a beautiful bird indeed! What would you say if you were to see a bird that was yellow and green with crimson-sunset plumes, and with two long glossy ribbons in his tail, and two beautiful crests on his forehead, with blue legs and a gamboge bill, flying from tree to tree in your garden? ”

“ There is no such other artist! To think of such a masterpiece being destroyed!” Now, when all the White Egrets (and let me tell you they are all masterpieces) have been destroyed, it will be quite impossible to replace any one of them; so that that kind of bird—or any other kind of bird or animal that has been shot and shot till there are no more of it left—will have gone in just the same way that a picture goes, when you burn it or tear it to pieces. But is there any picture of a bird or animal, that is so beautiful or so wonderful as that bird or animal itself? ”

“ It hovers over or under or in front of a flower, as the Humming-birds do, it keeps moving its wings in the same rapid way as they move theirs, and making the same humming noise with them, and it puts a long, slender, little brown thing, that looks something like the beak of a Humming-bird, right down into the flower, and sucks up the nectar that is in it, which is just what a Humming-bird does. So if the humming-bird moth were bright and gleaming, as Humming-birds—sunbeams—are, it would seem to be a Humming-bird and not a moth at all. ”

“ Then all those little glittering, jewelly, fairy-like things will go on living and being happy—will go on glittering and gleaming, flashing through the air, sparkling amongst the flowers, sitting and shining in dear little soft swinging cradles, on the tips of broad, green palm leaves, or the petals of fair, drooping flowers. They will go on being living sunbeams then, not poor, dead, dusty ones in hats. ”

“ Do not, then, be discontented any more, but be assured that you have life, as much as anything that lives and grows upon the earth, though, to be sure, it is of another kind. Be satisfied, therefore, and rejoice in your loveliness.” This answer of the sun's satisfied most of the sunbeams, but there were some who were foolish and whom it did not satisfy. “Give us such life as the children of the earth enjoy!” cried these; “the life that breathes and grows, that has a shape, that is born and dies. That is the life that we would have. ”

“ You know those lovely plumes that I told you about, that the Great Bird of Paradise has growing from both his sides, under the wings, and how he lifts up his wings and shoots them right up into the air, so that they fall all over him, like two most beautiful fountains that meet in the air and mingle their waters together. ”

“ Break the spell of the demon, that spell that is so real and so cruel, that spell that kills the soul. Thaw the poor frozen heart, thaw it with your own warm one, with your lips, with your soft hands and arms. ”

“ Other flowers are golden like the sun and grow all together in clusters, whilst others, again, grow on the branches of trees and hang down from them by long stalks which are like threads, each thread-stalk strung with flowers, as a thread is strung with beads. Only these flower-beads are as large as sunflowers, with colours varying from orange to red, and with beautiful, deep, purple-red spots upon them. ”

“ I do not mean, of course, that they are real wings, to fly with, no—it would be funny if a bird had two pairs of that kind—but ornamental ones, wings for the little hen Humming-bird, who has none, to look at and say, “How beautiful! How extraordinarily becoming!” Each of these dear little wings is made by a few delicate, long, slender feathers of a light chestnut colour, the same as the feathers of the crest, only, instead of being tipped with black, these ones are tipped with a spot of the same lovely green that there is on the throat and breast. ”

“ We have named the Humming-birds from the sound they make when they fly, and the Indians from their bright radiance and the speed at which they dart about. It is from flower to flower that they dart, and whilst you are looking at one sunbeam that is dancing about one flower, all at once there is a ray of light through the air, and another sunbeam is dancing about another flower. ”

“ We should not laugh at people because they are ridiculous. It makes them unhappy, and, besides, we may be sure that in some way or other we are just as ridiculous as they are, [Pg 152] We may not know in what way. That only shows how ignorant we are. It is best not to laugh at other people. If we want to laugh at any one, we can always laugh at ourselves.
Now, this poor Hermit Humming-bird was unhappy because he alone had no colours, and because all the other Humming-birds laughed at him. ”