Song Birds and Water Fowl 
one who has a seeing eye and listening ear ; 
and there is no finer text than they in all the 
world to stick to or to wander from. 
The student of Nature finds every grove and 
the brink of every stream to be populated, not 
as of yore with beauteous nymphs and alluring 
hamadryads, but with a probably much more 
instructive coterie, capable of transforming 
every solitude into society, the cultivation of 
whose acquaintance has been to me what 
Coleridge declared that poetry had been to 
him—‘‘its own exceeding great reward. It 
has multiplied and refined my enjoyments: it 
has endeared solitude: and it has given me the 
habit of wishing to discover the Good and the 
Beautiful in all that meets and surrounds me.’’ 
60 
