BIRDS. 139 



" holoo " across a lake than I am by the liquid 

 notes of the hermit-thrush. Something that 

 goes deeper with me is the whistling scream of 

 the circling hen-hawk, as he mounts the dizzy 

 spirals of the sky, than there is in the cat-bird's 

 jocund song. I prefer the " Too, hoo, hoo " of 

 the "boding owl" from his perch in the dark 

 hemlocks, to the robin's evening lay. The owl 

 starts the " goose-flesh " on me ; it is as if some 

 phase of the night side of nature had found a 

 voice for itself. Even the muffled " honk " of 

 wild geese at nightfall moved Bryant to write 

 the finest poem in all bird literature. There 

 is in it a'loftiness of feeling and beauty of ex- 

 pression that place it in the first ranks of short 

 poems. No melody of singing bird could have 

 moved him like this wild cry, shouted down 

 from the depths of the twilight sky by this flock 

 of chartless and compassless voyagers. 



To learn to like these voices and aspects of 

 nature is to get more out of life that is worth 

 having ; to neglect them is to pass by the sources 

 of true and healthy enjoyment. While such 

 negligence may not be a sin, it is an ill-man- 

 nered reception of a princely birthright. " To 

 consider the lilies how they grow, and notice 

 that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed 

 like one of them," is not an idle sauntering by 



