164 NOTES ON NEW ENGLAND BIRDS 



like a great moth seen against the sky. A will-o'-the- 

 wind. Following its path, as it were, through the vortices 

 of the air. The poetry of motion. Not as preferring one 

 place to another, but enjoying each as long as possible. 

 Most gracefully so surveys new scenes and revisits the 

 old. As if that hawk were made to be the symbol of my 

 thought, how bravely he came round over those parts of 

 the wood which he had not surveyed, taking in a new 

 segment, annexing new territories ! Without " heave- 

 yo ! " it trims its sail. It goes about without the creak- 

 ing of a block. That America yacht of the air that 

 never makes a tack, though it rounds the globe itself, 

 takes in and shakes out its reefs without a flutter, — its 

 sky-scrapers all under its control. Holds up one wing, 

 as if to admire, and sweeps off this way, then holds up 

 the other and sweeps that. If there are two concentri- 

 cally circling, it is such a regatta as Southampton wa- 

 ters never witnessed. 1 



Flights of imagination, Coleridgean thoughts. So a 

 man is said to soar in his thought, ever to fresh woods 

 and pastures new. Rises as in thought. 



What made the hawk mount ? Did you perceive the 

 manoeuvre ? Did he fill himself with air ? Before you 

 were aware of it, he had mounted by his spiral path into 

 the heavens. 



April 22, 1852. Saw four hawks soaring high in the 

 heavens over the Swamp Bridge Brook. At first saw 

 three ; said to myself there must be four, and found the 



1 [The yacht America had in the preceding August won her famous 

 cup in a race round the Isle of Wight.] 



