122 What Birds Have Done With Me 



Tufts and something of Italian manner in its 

 diversions. If your Lordship will honor me with 

 your company, I will promise to entertain you 

 with much better music and more agreeable scenes 

 than you have met with at the Opera." 



Addison's appreciation of old friends of ours 

 carries back into the past, a point of view that 

 divorces a real singer from an anatomical speci- 

 men. It's a rill near the head-waters of that 

 great river, that disregarding mere drift wood, is 

 now rather generally recognized as one of the 

 living forces of the world-creation's poetry, crea- 

 tion's choral singers. 



Joseph Addison, recognized as a thinker of un- 

 usual power, of necessity, could not neglect the 

 wonderful house of life in which he lived and had 

 his being, and consequently investigated bird 

 life and had his soul thrilled with bird music; 

 music way beyond man's imitation of something 

 to be heard where dawn winds laugh and the trees 

 of the field clap their hands. It was an old song 

 that the Blackbird was singing in those days, but 

 what Addison heard was inferior to what Frances 

 Ledwidge heard and makes us hear. Listen : 



"And then three syllables of melody 

 Dropped from a Blackbird's lute and died apart 

 Far in the dewy dark. No more but three, 

 Yet sweeter music never touched a heart 

 'Neath the blue domes of London." 



