66 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE. 



airy eddies, for are not all the meadow-thistles following him? 

 Now gleams a sunflash from some familiar glassy pond, as 



"the thin-winged swallow, skating on the air," 



leaves a brief token of twitter in exchange for a buzzing fly that 

 erewhile hovered beneath the porch. 



And now the soft breeze seems laden with a new enchant- 

 ment. A shadow falls upon my closed eyes, and the scent of 

 grass and clover gives place to the cool hint of hemlock, and 

 tinctured mould, and pungent spikenard roots, and mossy trick- 

 ling rocks ; I hear the gurgling of the brook and the sounds of a 

 rumbling bridge, and all seem dancing attendance on a vague, 

 mossy nest somewhere stowed away ; for has not that brief call of 

 " Phoebe !" spoken for all from the barn beyond ? 



Hark, from the apple-tree in the field below, that note so 

 full and ripe and mellow ! "A robin," say you ? No ; nor an 

 oriole. There is a distinct individuality in that song, which, while 

 suggesting both these birds, still differentiates it in many re- 

 spects as the superior to either, as though from a fuller throat, a 

 more ample vocal source. It is one of the rarest, choicest voices 

 among all our feathered songsters, in timbre and volume surpass- 

 ing the thrush, and in these qualities unequalled, I think, by any 

 of our birds. Listen to the overflowing measure of its melody ! 

 How comparatively few the notes, and yet how telling! no sin- 

 gle tone lost, no superficial intricacies. Sensuous, and suffused 

 with color, it is like a rich, pulpy, luscious, pink-cheeked tropic 

 fruit rendered into sound. Such would seem the irresistible fig- 

 ure as I listen with closed eyes to the welling notes a figure 

 entirely independent of, though certainly sustained in, the ornitho- 

 logical form pictured in the song, sitting quietly on an upper 

 twig, with full plump breast as carmine-cheeked as the autumn 

 apples now promised in the swelling blossom calyxes among 

 which it so quietly nestles. I can see the jetty head, and quills 

 splashed with silvery white, and the intervals of song seemed 

 spanned with rosy light as pure as the prism released from those 



