208 IN BIRD LAND. 
“Thou tells 0’ never-ending care, 
O’ speechless grief and dark despair ; 
For pity’s sake, sweet bird, nae mair! 
Or my poor heart is broken.” 
If Coleridge had studied the birds more care- 
fully, and acquainted himself with their griefs, he 
never would have written, in mockery of Milton’s 
“ L’Allegro,” — 
“ A melancholy bird! O, idle thought! 
In nature there is nothing melancholy !” 
I have seen a pair of birds whose little brood had 
just been cruelly slaughtered, and my heart bled for 
them when I saw that their anguish was too great 
for expression. Perhaps birds that have been be- 
reaved soon forget their sorrow, and yet I doubt it; 
for if you listen to the minor treble of the black- 
capped chickadee, you cannot help feeling that he is 
singing a dirge for some long-lost love, or, if not 
that, may be recounting, by some occult law of 
heredity, the story of the many sorrows of his ances- 
tors from the beginning down to his own generation. 
What ravishing sadness there is in the songs of the 
white-throated and white-crowned sparrows! The 
bluebird is always sighing as he shifts from post to 
post, and nothing could be more melancholy than 
the call of the jay in autumn. The crow at a dis- 
tance complains of his disappointment, while the 
wood-thrush, in his evening and morning voluntaries, 
rehearses the sad memories of his life. Keats speaks 
of the “plaintive anthem” of the nightingale, and 
