NEW GLEANINGS IN OLD FIELDS 



blue backs and ruddy throats glancing in the sun, 

 and their gentle, unctuous wing gossip falling on our 

 ears. Their coarse nests — mud without, but feath- 

 ers within — were plastered on the rafters in the 

 peak, and when the young were out we saw them 

 perched in a row on the ridge-board, resting from 

 their first flights. 



Now, as I sit within my barn-door outlook, the 

 same swallows are playing before me, untouched by 

 the many long years that have passed, giving the 

 impression of perpetual youth; the same tender, 

 confiding calls, the same darting, wayward flight, 

 the same swift coursings above the shorn meadows ; 

 darlings of the ripe summer air, aerial feeders, 

 reaping an invisible bounty above us, touching the 

 earth in quest of a straw or a feather, or for clay 

 for the nest, tireless of wing, and impotent of foot, 

 as of old. 



The swallow has two words, one for her friends, 

 and one for her foes, — "Wit, wit, wit," uttered so 

 confidingly for the friends, and "Sleet, sleet, sleet," 

 uttered sharply for the foes. 



Instead of the ridge-board of my youth, the swal- 

 low now has a new perch, the telephone and tele- 

 graph wires strung along the highway. 



Shall we look upon the swallow as a songster? 

 Virgil refers to him as such, and when he perches 

 upon the telephone-wire in front of my barn-door 

 and fills and refills his mouth with a succession of 



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