ness and is transported, and the listener with him, 

 in a reverie of exceeding beauty. It is a wondrous 

 love-song, an incomparable madrigal, blending 

 with the morning sunshine and the first green 

 leaves of the alders, soft and low as faint murmur- 

 ings of a stream, a fluid melody uttered for chosen 

 ears. 



All too soon the only bird notes are those of 

 the redeye and the pewee. For music we have 

 the tree-toads and cicada. The sounds of this 

 season are rhythmic and vibratory virile songs of 

 the year's manhood the mature year, lusty and 

 vigorous. But how soon they dwindle and wane, 

 despite this sonorous protestation, grow silent and 

 slip into the sear and yellow, and thence into the 

 leafless, the glittering, the sublime aspedls of winter ! 

 The last of September brings with it just a reminder 

 of the sweet and winsome sounds of spring. At 

 this season the song-sparrow indulges in a wonder- 

 fully ecstatic reverie, a bit of wild melody charged 

 with feeling as of some larger consciousness, some 

 tribal memories of that musical race, now finding 

 voice in the waning year. So continuous and varied 

 is the theme, and withal so complex and involved 

 as compared with his usual simple and positive lay, 



5 



