WILD PASTURES 



day of August will be as one to twenty 

 to those of the first day of June are 

 gay young sports who did not care to 

 marry, or who, disappointed in love, still 

 sing to keep their courage up. It is the 

 best singers who are most strangely silent 

 now, as they have been for weeks; nor 

 will most of them be heard until next 

 spring, hereabouts. 



My catbird was so sorrowfully unseen 

 and unheard that I began to think the 

 cat had got him, till I hunted him up, 

 down the hill among the scrub oaks. 

 He was as dilapidated and passe-looking 

 as his nest in the lilacs; as if, like it, 

 the young birds had kicked him pretty 

 nearly to pieces before they got through 

 with him. But he perked up a bit when 

 he saw me, flipped an apology for a tail, 

 and miaued in a manner that was humor- 

 ously unlike him, it was so deprecatory. 

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