The Night Warbler 



By H. E. TUTTLE. Lake Forest. 111. 



" V '\ ARELY, rarely comest thou, spirit of delight," so may we excuse the 

 l"^ Oven-bird his oft-repeated daylight roundelay, for his songs of the 

 noon hour are but jingling alliterations beside the floods of ecstasy that 

 he pours forth above the tree-tops in the dark of night. How should he consent 

 to vain repetitions, like the Pharisee, that had sent his song athwart the heavens 

 in wild lyrics of unearthly joy? For "he was taught in Paradise to ease his 

 breast of melodies," and needs but some dream-sent quickening power to 

 yield increase. 



When the starlit nights are warm with the promise of June, then may you 

 hear the first glad upward rush of that far-flung torrent of poetry. Mounting 

 with hurried gladness, as if he feared some surcease of delight, he gains the 

 open sky, spilling the gay notes earthward in his wake, like the tumbling drops 

 of a mountain waterfall. While the last burst of warbled rapture haunts the 

 still air of night, he has sheered into a swift descent, with perhaps a murmured 

 snatch of the refrain, uttered regretfully, as if Lethe had overtaken the singer 

 and hushed the gay chords whilst yet they trembled from his heart. 



But with the dawn of day he is again the demure and mincing walker of 

 the forest trails, forgetful of, or choosing to ignore, his midnight revelries. 

 The spell that was on him has been withdrawn, and he returns to the workaday 

 world, like Cinderella to her ashes. He sings with vigorous gaiety, till the woods 

 ring with his song, but neither the words nor the measure is the same: it is a 

 gay song, but it wants art; there is not in it the careless rapture of his moonlit 

 flights. Sometimes, even when the sun is high, he falls into a reverie, perched 

 on a horizontal bough above the glade, then, rarely, and but for a moment, as 

 if in a day-dream, the lyric gift is restored. He darts from his perch like a mad 

 thing, and whips through the woods with incredible speed, singing wildly his 

 flight song with all the abandon of a Bacchante, till, as suddenly, he comes to 

 rest upon the branch from which he started, dozes a space, and wakes to walk 

 quietly the length of his perch, returning to the earth as if quite unconscious 

 of what has occurred. 



The cares of the nesting season, thougli they may scant him in his diurnal 

 pleasures, have no power over the hours of darkness, and if you are wakeful 

 you may hear the aerial love-song of this midnight troubadour, that, forsak- 

 ing earth, launches himself toward the stars. 



(aag) 



