WHY BIKDS SING IK THE NIGHT. 



In connection with this theme, we cannot escape a 

 feeling of regret, almost like sorrow, when we reflect that 

 the true nightingale and the skylark — the classical birds 

 of European literature — are strangers to our fields and 

 woods. In May and June there is no want of sylvan 

 minstrels to wake the morn and to sing the vespers of a 

 quiet evening. A flood of song awakens us at the earliest 

 daylight ; and the shy and solitary veery, after the vesper 

 bird has concluded his evening hymn, pours his few pen- 

 sive notes into the very bosom of twilight, and makes the 

 hour sacred by his melody. But after twilight is sped 

 and the moon rises to shed her meek radiance over the 

 sleeping earth, the nightingale is not here to greet her 

 rising, and to turn her melancholy beams into brightness 

 and gladness. When the queen moon is on her throne, 

 " clustered around by all her starry Fays," the whippoor- 

 will alone brings her the tribute of his monotonous song, 

 and soothes the dull ear of night with sounds which, how- 

 ever delightful, are not of heaven. 



We have become so familiar with the lark and the 

 nightingale by perusing the romance of rural life, that 

 " neither breath of Morn when she ascends " without this 

 the charm of her earliest harbinger, nor " silent Night " 

 without her " solemn bird," seems holy as when we read 

 of them in pastoral song. Poetry has hallowed to our 

 minds the pleasing objects of the Old World. Those of 

 the New must be cherished in song many more years be- 

 fore they can be equally sacred to the imagination. 



