At the Water's Edge 



arvensis — which has secured to the family name 

 an eminence in some respects superior even to 

 that of our own superb thrushes. The con- 

 tagion of its rapture has been caught by many 

 a famous poet — the fiery Shelley, the reposeful 

 Wordsworth, the genial, roguish and fatherly 

 old Chaucer. With the last, the lark was an 

 evident favorite ; and, although he did not in- 

 dulge in any such lengthy, formal, and elabo- 

 rate apostrophe to the exalted songster as will 

 at once occur to the reader of Wordsworth and 

 Shelley, his brief and frequent allusions, inci- 

 dental, affectionate, and spontaneous as they 

 are, betoken quite as deep and fervent admi- 

 ration. Every lover of this benignant and 

 intensely human poet — "a genial day in an 

 English spring," as a critic happily styles him 

 — will recall the passage in the " Canterbury 

 Tales," beginning 



" And now the larke, messager of daye, 

 Salueth in hir song the morwe graye;" 



wherein he reverts, with the dainty touch of 

 the genuine poet, to his favorite theme — the 

 beautiful in nature. 



Among many pleasing memories of German 

 life, I recall one with peculiar distinctness — a 

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