246 IN BIRD LAND. 
“My childhood’s earliest thoughts are linked with thee ; 
The sight of thee calls back the robin’s song, 
Who, from the dark old tree 
Beside the door, sang clearly all day long; 
And I, secure in childish piety, 
Listened as if I heard an angel sing 
With news from heaven, which he could bring 
Fresh every day to my untainted ears, 
When birds and flowers and I were happy peers.”’ 
A bird often affords our poet a metaphor or a 
simile by which to represent some sad reminiscence 
of his life. Listen to this sweet minor strain, — 
“ As a twig trembles, which a bird 
Lights on to sing, then leaves unbent, 
So is my memory thrilled and stirred ; — 
I only know she came and went.” 
With what a plaintive melody the last line lingers 
in one’s mind, like some far-off melancholy strain, 
singing itself over again and again with a persistency 
that will not be hushed, — “I only know she came 
and went.” There are times, too, when our bard 
falls into a slightly despondent mood, and even 
then the birds serve to give a turn to his pensive 
reflections, — 
“ But each day brings less summer cheer, 
Crimps more our ineffectual spring, 
And something earlier every year 
Our singing birds take wing.” 
To my mind, he is less attractive when his verse 
takes on this cheerless hue, and I therefore turn 
gladly to his more jubilant lays, in which he seems 
to have caught the joy of the full-toned bird 
