132 Twelve Months With 



we feel prompted to enquire with Helen Hunt 

 Jackson : 



"I wonder what the clover thinks 

 Intimate friend of bobolinks?" 



Thoreau gives us this characteristic description 

 of his song: "He is just touching the strings of 

 his theorbo, his glasschord, his water organ, and 

 one or two notes globe themselves and fall in liquid 

 bubbles from his tuning throat. It is as if he 

 touched his harp within a vase of liquid melody, 

 and when he lifted it out the notes fell like bubbles 

 from the trembling strings. Methinks they are the 

 most liquidly sweet and melodious sounds I ever 

 heard." 

 And Thomas Hill gives us these apt lines: 



"A single note, so sweet and low, 

 Like a full heart's overflow. 

 Forms the prelude; but the strain 

 Gives us no such tone again; 

 For the wild and saucy song 

 Leaps and skips the notes among 

 With such quick and sportive play. 

 Ne'er was madder, merrier lay." 



Any one familiar with the rapturous song of 

 the bobolink, as he flutters about among the clover 

 blossoms and teeters himself upon the meadow 

 grass and swings in the summer wind, will con- 

 fess to the accuracy of these descriptions of his 



