WILD SCENES AND SONG-BIRDS. 



CHAPTEE I. 



NATURE AND HER HARMONIES. 



I LOVE song-birds with a singular affection. Out of the 

 bottom of my heart I love them for of all God's creatures, 

 except a clear-eyed, innocent child, they have been to me a 

 wonder and a miracle. 



I never could get done wondering to hear them sing. It 

 sounds so strange to me that anything could be happy 

 enough to sing but angels and young girls ! 



Singing, when we come to think of it, seems properly to be 

 the language of a deathless being the right form in which 

 the exultings of an Immortal should be poured among the 

 waves of shoreless sound. 



That a sweet sound should ever cease to be, appears to me 

 unnatural at least unpoetical for, let its vibrations once 

 begin, though they may soon die to our gross sense, must 

 they not go widening, circling on, stinging the sense of my- 

 riad other lives with a mysterious pleasantness (such as will 

 overcome us in a wood upon an April day), until the utter- 

 most bound of our poor space be past, and yet the large cir- 

 cumference go spread and spreading tremulous among the 

 girdling stars ? 



It may be so for all we can tell ! If it be so, how quaint 

 it is to hear these little feathered creatures, from some frail 



