16 , BIRDS AND POETS 



As full of gladness and as free of heaven, 



I, with my fate contented, will plod on. 



And hope for higher raptures, when life's day is done." 



But better than either — better and more than a 

 hundred pages — is Shakespeare's simple line, — 



"Hark, hark, the lark at heaven's gate sings," 



or John Lyly's, his contemporary, — 



" Who is 't now we hear ? 

 None but the lark so shrill and clear ; 

 Now at heaven's gate she claps her wings. 

 The morn not waking till she sings." 



We have no well-known pastoral bird in the 

 Eastern States that answers to the skylark. The 

 American pipit or titlark and the shore lark, both 

 birds of the far north, and seen in the States only 

 in fall and winter, are said to sing on the wing in 

 a similar strain. Common enough in our woods are 

 two birds that have many of the habits and manners 

 of the lark, — the water-thrush and the golden- 

 crowned thrush, or oven-bird. They are both walk- 

 ers, and the latter frequently sings on the wing up 

 aloft after the manner of the lark. Starting from its 

 low perch, it rises in a spiral flight far above the tall- 

 est trees, and breaks out in a clear, ringing, ecstatic 

 song, sweeter and more richly modulated than the 

 skylark's, but brief, ceasing almost before you have 

 noticed it ; whereas the skylark goes singing away 

 after you have forgotten him and returned to him 

 half a dozen times. 



But on the Great Plains of the West there is a 

 bird whose song resembles the skylark's quite closely 



