14 THE RETURN OF THE BIRDS. 



thrushes have all come ; and I sit down upon the first 

 rock, with hands full of the pink azalea, to listen. 

 With me, the cuckoo does not arrive till June ; and 

 often the goldfinch, the king-bird, the scarlet tanager 

 delay their coming till then. In the meadows the bob- 

 olink is in all his glory; in the high pastures the field- 

 sparrow sings his breezy vesper-hymn ; and the woods 

 are unfolding to the music of the thrushes. 



The cuckoo is one of the most solitary birds of our 

 forests, and is strangely tame and quiet, appearing 

 equally untouched by joy or grief, fear or anger. Some- 

 thing remote seems ever weighing upon his mind. His 

 note or call is as of one lost or wandering, and to the 

 farmer is prophetic of rain. Amid the general joy and 

 the sweet assurance of things, I love to listen to the 

 strange clairvoyant call. Heard a quarter of a mile 

 away, from out the depths of the forest, there is some- 

 thing peculiarly weird and monkish about it. Words- 

 worth's lines upon the European species apply equally 



1 1 to ours : — 



" O blithe new-comer ! I have heard, 

 I hear thee and rejoice : 

 O cuckoo ! shall I call thee bird ? 

 Or but a wandering voice ? 



" While I am lying on the grass, 

 Thy loud note smites my ear ! 

 From hill to hill it seems to pass, 

 At once far off and near ! 



