PEPACTON 



But this is just what the bobolink does when 

 the care of his young begins to weigh upon himi 



"Meanwhile that devil-may-care, the bobolink, 

 Remembering duty, in mid-quaver stops 



Just ere he sweeps o'er rapture's tremulous brink, 

 And 'twixt the winrows most demurely drops." 



I do not vouch for that dropping between the wind- 

 rows, as in my part of the country the bobolinks 

 flee before the hay-makers, but that sudden stop- 

 ping on the brink of rapture, as if thoughts of his 

 helpless young had extinguished his joy, is charac- 

 teristic. 



Another carefully studied description of Lowell's 

 is this : 



"The robin sings as of old from the limb! 

 . The catbird croons in the lilac-bush! 

 Through the dim arbor, himself more dim, 

 Silently hops the hermit thrush." 



Among trees Lowell has celebrated the oak, the 

 pine, the birch; and among flowers, the violet and 

 the dandelion. The last, I think, is the most pleas- 

 ing of these poems : 



"Dear common flower, that grow'st beside the way, 

 Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold, 

 First pledge of blithesome May." 



The dandelion is indeed, in our latitude, the pledge 

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