2 08 IN BIRD LAND. 



"Thou tells o' never-ending care, 

 O' speechless grief and dark despair ; 

 For pity's sake, sweet bird, nae mair! 

 Or my poor heart is broken.'' 



If Coleridge had studied the birds more care- 

 fully, and acquainted himself with their griefs, he 

 never would have written, in mockery of Milton's 

 " L' Allegro," — 



" A melancholy bird I O, idle thought I 

 In nature there is nothing melancholy ! " 



I have seen a pair of birds whose little brood had 

 just been cruelly slaughtered, and my heart bled for 

 them when I saw that their anguish was too great 

 for expression. Perhaps birds that have been be- 

 reaved soon forget their sorrow, and yet I doubt it ; 

 for if you listen to the minor treble of the black- 

 capped chickadee, you cannot help feeling that he is 

 singing a dirge for some long-lost love, or, if not 

 that, may be recounting, by some occult law of 

 heredity, the story of the many sorrows of his ances- 

 tors from the beginning down to his own generation. 

 What ravishing sadness there is in the songs of the 

 white-throated and white-crowned sparrows ! The 

 bluebird is always sighing as he shifts from post to 

 post, and nothing could be more melancholy than 

 the call of the jay in autumn. The crow at a dis- 

 tance complains of his disappointment, while the 

 wood-thrush, in his evening and morning voluntaries, 

 rehearses the sad memories of his life. Keats speaks 

 of the "plaintive anthem" of the nightingale, and 



