72 BIKDS AND POETS 



They give back nothing to my yearning gaze. But 

 there, on every hand, are the long-famUiar birds, — 

 the same ones I left behind me, the same ones I 

 knew in my youth, — robins, sparrows, swallows, 

 bobolinks, crows, hawks, high-holes, meadowlarks, 

 etc., all there before me, and ready to renew and 

 perpetuate the old associations./ Before my house 

 is begun, theirs is completed j/bef ore I have taken 

 root at all, they are thoroughly established. I do 

 not yet know what kind of apples my apple-trees 

 bear, but there, in the cavity of a decayed limb, the 

 bluebirds are building a nest, and yonder, on that 

 branch, the social sparrow is busy with hairs and 

 straws. The robins have tasted the quality of my 

 cherries, and the cedar-birds have known every red 

 cedar on the place these many years. While my 

 house is yet surrounded by its scaffoldings, the 

 phoebe-bird has built her exquisite mossy nest on a 

 projecting stone beneath the eaves, a robin has filled 

 a niche in the wall with mud and dry grass, the 

 chimney swallows are going out and in the chimney, 

 and a pair of house wrens are at home in a snug 

 cavity over the door, and, during an April snow- 

 storm, a number of hermit thrushes have taken 

 shelter in my unfinished chambers. Indeed, I am 

 in the midst of friends before I fairly know it. 

 The place is not so new as I had thought. It is 

 already old; the birds have supplied the memories 

 of many decades of years. / 



There is something almost pathetic in the fact 

 that the birds remain forever the same. You grow 



