The Song and the Singer 13 1 



charged with an inexpressible plaint, an eternal 

 lament, fitting it beyond any other wild thing, to 

 tell its woeful story o'er and o'er amid the wreck- 

 age of old battle-fields. Indeed, there seems no 

 personal element in it if it be grief at all, and 

 from having been accustomed to think of it as 

 expressed in exclusive lament for that fine lover, 

 Cock Robin, dead before his time, a little stretch 

 of the imagination, and lo! a universal lament 

 over the wretchedness of humanity. 



Optimism is born again at the sound of the 

 cheery voice of Cock Robin himself, very much 

 alive and seemingly well satisfied with the world , 

 and life as he finds it, or at least putting up a 

 splendid bluff. Mr. Woodpecker, I hear those 

 sounds you are making, two blocks away, using a 

 telephone for a drum and as an Irishman might 

 say, while you are waking the echoes, you are not 

 saying a word. 



The Song Sparrow, everybody's darling, is 

 next; swinging back the cob-webbed doors into 

 the music room of one's heart of hearts. 



Ah! I hear you, Mr. Red-Winged Blackbird, 

 in the willows down by the lake, and your song 

 is liquid sweetness, long drawn out, a joy forever; 

 a thread of gold running through the years, a 

 tinkling melody, not of the earth earthy. 



How good it seems to be at home ; how inex- 

 pressibly good to be at home with all these voices 

 of Nature. 



