260 IN BIRD LAND: 
“Or, if to me you will not hark, 
By Beaver Brook a thrush is ringing 
Till all the alder-coverts dark 
Seem sunshine-dappled with his singing. 
“<Come out beneath the unmastered sky, 
With its emancipating spaces, 
And learn to sing as well as I, 
Without premeditated graces. 
““* Come out! with me the oriole cries, 
Escape the demon that pursues you ! 
And hark! the cuckoo weatherwise, 
Still hiding, farther onward wooes you.’ ” 
But this time, for a wonder, the poet declines the 
invitation to go out of doors, because, as he says, 
‘‘a bird is singing in my brain;” and yet he 
does so with evident regret, for he exclaims, in 
response to the cat-bird’s plea, — 
“¢ Alas, dear friend, that, all my days, 
Has poured from that syringa thicket 
The quaintly discontinuous lays 
To which I hold a season ticket, — 
“ A season ticket cheaply bought 
With a dessert of pilfered berries, 
And who so oft my love has caught 
With morn and evening voluntaries, 
“* Deem me not faithless, if all day 
Among my dusty books I linger, 
No pipe, like thee, for June to play 
With fancy-led, half-conscious finger. 
