72 BIRDS AND POETS 
They give back nothing to my yearning gaze. But 
there, on every hand, are the long-familiar birds, — 
the same ones I left behind me, the same ones I 
knew in my youth,—robins, sparrows, swallows, 
bobolinks, crows, hawks, high-holes, meadowlarks, 
etc., all there before me, and ready to renew and 
perpetuate the old associations. Before my house 
is begun, theirs is completed; before I have taken 
root at all, they are thoroughly established. I do 
not yet know what kind of apples my apple-trees 
bear, but there, in the cavity of a decayed limb, the 
bluebirds are building a nest, and yonder, on that 
branch, the social sparrow is busy with hairs and 
straws. The robins have tasted the quality of my 
cherries, and the cedar-birds have known every red 
cedar on the place these many years. While my 
house is yet surrounded by its scaffoldings, the 
phebe-bird has built her exquisite mossy nest on a 
projecting stone beneath the eaves, a robin has filled 
a niche in the wall with mud and dry grass, the 
chimney swallows are going out and in the chimney, 
and a pair of house wrens are at home in a snug 
cavity over the door, and, during an April snow- 
storm, a number of hermit thrushes have taken 
shelter in my unfinished chambers. Indeed, I am | 
in the midst of friends before I fairly know it. 
The place is not so new as I had thought. It is 
already old; the birds have supplied the memories 
of many decades of years. 
There is something almost pathetic in the fact 
that the birds remain forever the same. You grow 
