The American Robin 95 



young and continue to feed them for sometime after they have 

 left their nest. In our city I remember to have seen four 

 young ones, seemingly larger than their mother, following her 

 about and most piteously begging her for food, and how hard 

 she did work for them ! 



It has been my privilege to hear many distinguished sing- 

 ers, and the songs of these have touched my heart and I hope 

 have made a better man of me, but none of them has left with 

 me a sweeter and more delightful memory than the song of the 

 robin. I was returning home from my office one evening 

 through a spring shower. The clouds were breaking away in 

 the west and here and there the sun was shining through their 

 rifts. To my right on the topmost bough of a large maple 

 tree, a robin with his head uplifted to heaven was singing in 

 the rain. Enchanted I stopped to 



"Listen to that soaring strain! 

 It is the robin in the rain. 

 Sitting there aloft, aloof, 

 Pouring from his throbbing throat, 

 Note upon ecstatic note; 

 Rapture in the swift refrain 

 Robin in the rain." 



No other bird has been written about more and is more 

 warmly welcomed and loved than the robin. This is due to 

 the fact that he lives near to our houses, is our most familiar 

 bird, and is the bird of varied and constant song. It is his 

 morning song that welcomes the rising sun and his evening 

 song that puts it to rest beyond the western horizon. I am 

 ever reminded by him that Longfellow says : 



"Think, every morning when the sun peeps through 



The dim, leaf-latticed windows of the grove, 

 How jubilant the happy birds renew 



Their old melodious madrigals of love! 

 And when you think of this, remember, too, 



'Tis always morning, somewhere, and above 

 The wakening continents, from shore to shore, 



Somewhere the birds are singing evermore." 



At Buzzard's Roost at the first faint coming of the light, 

 the anthem begins with the crowing of the roosters in the far 



