VI 



BIRDS AND BIRDS 



is an old legend which one of our poets 

 -*- has made use of about the bird in the brain, 

 a legend based, perhaps, upon the human significance 

 of our feathered neighbors. Was not Audubon's 

 brain full of birds, and very lively ones, too? A 

 person who knew him says he looked like a bird 

 himself; keen, alert, wide-eyed. It is not unusual 

 to see the hawk looking out of the human counte- 

 nance, and one may see or have seen that still nobler 

 bird, the eagle. The song-birds might all have been 

 brooded and hatched in the human heart. They are 

 typical of its highest aspirations, and nearly the 

 whole gamut of human passion and emotion is ex- 

 pressed more or less fully in their varied songs. 

 Among our own birds, there is the song of the her- 

 mit thrush for devoutness and religious serenity; 

 that of the wood thrush for the musing, melodious 

 thoughts of twilight; the song sparrow's for simple 

 faith and trust, the bobolink's for hilarity and glee, 

 the mourning dove's for hopeless sorrow, the vireo's 

 for all-day and every-day contentment, and the noc- 

 turne of the mockingbird for love. Then there are 



