36 BIKDS AND POETS 



in his pleasant poem, "The Sparrow," hut he must 



some time have looked upon the bird with genuine 



emotion to have written the first two stanzas : — 



" Glimmers gay the leafless thicket 

 Close beside my garden gate, 

 Where, so light, from post to wicket. 

 Hops the sparrow, blithe, sedate ; 

 Who, with meekly folded wing. 

 Comes to sun himself and sing. 



" It was there, perhaps, last year. 

 That his little house he built ; 

 For he seems to perk and peer, 

 And to twitter, too, and tilt 

 The bare branches in between, 

 With a fond, familiar mien." 



The bluebird has not been overlooked, and Hal- 

 leck, Longfellow, and Mrs. Sigourney have vraitten 

 poems upon him, but from none of them does there 

 fall that first note of his in early spring, — a note 

 that may be called the violet of sound, and as wel- 

 come to the ear, heard above the cold damp earth, 

 as is its floral type to the eye a few weeks later. 

 Lowell's two lines come nearer the mark: — 



" The bluebird, shifting his light load of song 

 From post to post along the cheerless fence." 



Or the first swallow that comes twittering up the 

 southern valley, laughing a gleeful, childish laugh, 

 and awakening such memories in the heart, who has 

 put him in a poem? So the hummingbird, too, 

 escapes through the finest meshes of rhyme. 



The most melodious of our songsters, the wood 

 thrush and hermit thrush — birds whose strains, 

 more than any others, express harmony and serenity 



