BIRD LEGEND AND LIFE 



Later in the season, when all the earth is teeming with 

 life and the vernal chorus is at the f uU, in the early morning 

 hours the robin's awakening voice heralds the coming of 

 each new day as he calls out that earth's great dark slumber- 

 robe is being taken away, and the time is come to rouse from 

 the inactivity of the night. The faintest purpling of the east 

 is the signal for the hair-bird's thin, incisive prelude to the 

 avian hymn of the morn. Then the robin takes up the mes- 

 sage in a voice that carries, and soon all the morning air is 

 athrob with the voices of inmmierable singers in an anthem 

 that, breaking our slumbers, hallows the dawn. If there 

 be such, distance obliterates all discord and all imperfection. 

 With such inspiration, is it any wonder that man in the long 

 ago learned to express himself in musical tones? 



In this matin hymn of the woodland choir the robin's 

 voice leads all the rest. Even when the great flood of song 

 has reached full swell his tones can still be clearly dis- 

 tinguished, and when, with the growing light, he withdraws 

 from the chorus, the song dies out with the darkness, like a 

 lullaby that is ended. 



Then for a season all the feathered creatures of the 

 wood give themselves up to the pleasures of the feast spread 

 before them. It is now that the coimtless forms of creeping 

 insect life are abroad, drawn from their diurnal retreats 

 under leaves and grasses by the alluring damps of the night. 

 The hymn just heard from these feathered songsters, while 

 it seemed to us but the outpouring of devotional spirit, was 

 to those of their kind also an invitation to the feast, or, if 

 you will, a timeful grace before meals. 



To some, more beautifiQ than this is the robin's even- 

 song, sung after the catbird and the red thrush, from their 

 haimts in grape-vine tangles, have called their farewell to 



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