THE WOOD-PEWEE. 129 



" Phmbe ! it calls and calls again ; 



And Ovid, could he but have heard. 

 Had hung a legendary pain 

 About the memory of the bird. 



" Phahe! is all it has to say 



In plaintive cadence o'er and o'er, 

 Like children who have lost their way, 



And know their names, but nothing more." 



This poetical tribute is certainly very graceful, 

 and would be true to life if the phonetic represen- 

 tation were a little more accurate. Instead of 

 Fhiebe, imagine the song to be Pe-e-w-e-e-e or Phe- 

 e-w-e-e-e, and you will gain a clear idea of the min- 

 strelsy of this songster of the wildwood. However, 

 he frequently varies his tune, — to prevent its 

 becoming monotonous, I opine. He sometimes 

 closes his refrain with the falling inflection or cir- 

 cumflex, and sometimes with the rising, as the mood 

 prompts him. In the former case the first syllable 

 receives the greater emphasis and is the more pro- 

 longed, and in the latter this order is precisely 

 reversed. When the last syllable is uttered with the 

 rising circumflex, it is usually, if not always, cut off 

 somewhat abruptly. Moreover, this minstrel often 

 runs the two syllables of his song together, — a pecu- 

 liarity that I have represented in my notes, taken 

 while listening to the song, in this way : Phe-e-e-o- 

 o-w-e-e-e ! There is a characteristic swing about 

 the melody that refuses to be caught in the mesh 

 of letters and syllables. 



In some of the pewee's vocal efforts he does not 

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