c 24 :i 



BARN SWALLOW 



Mat 20, 1852. A barn swallow accompanied me 

 across the Depot Field, methinks attracted by the 

 insects which I started, though I saw them not, 

 wheeling and tacking incessantly on all sides and 

 repeatedly dashing within a rod of me. It is an agree- 

 able sight to watch one. Nothing lives in the air but 

 is in rapid motion. 



Journal, iv, 66. 



VESPER SPARROW (BAY-WING) 



May 12, 1857. While dropping beans in the gar- 

 den at Texas just after sundown, I hear from across 

 the fields the note of the bay-wing, and it instantly 

 translates me from the sphere of my work and repairs 

 all the world that we jointly inhabit. It reminds me 

 of so many country afternoons and evenings when 

 this bird's strain was heard far over the fields. The 

 spirit of its earth-song, of its serene and true phi- 

 losophy, was breathed into me, and I saw the world 

 as through a glass, as it lies eternally. Some of its 

 aboriginal contentment, even of its domestic feli- 

 city, possessed me. What he suggests is permanently 

 true. As the bay-wing sang many a thousand years 

 ago, so sang he to-night. In the beginning God heard 

 his song and pronounced it good, and hence it has 

 endured. ... I ordinarily plod along a sort of white- 



