WOOD THRUSH 379 



July 5, 1852. Some birds are poets and sing all 

 summer. They are the true singers. Any man can write 

 verses during the love season. I am reminded of this 

 while we rest in the shade on the Major Heywood road 

 and listen to a wood thrush, now just before sunset. 

 We are most interested in those birds who sing for the 

 love of the music and not of their mates ; who meditate 

 their strains, and amuse themselves with singing ; the 

 birds, the strains, of deeper sentiment ; not bobolinks, 

 that lose their plumage, their bright colors, and their 

 song so early. The robin, the red-eye, the veery, the 

 wood thrush, etc., etc. 



The wood thrush's is no opera music ; it is not so 

 much the composition as the strain, the tone, — cool 

 bars of melody from the atmosphere of everlasting 

 morning or evening. It is the quality of the song, not 

 the sequence. In the peawai's * note there is some sul- 

 triness, but in the thrush's, though heard at noon, there 

 is the liquid coolness of things that are just drawn 

 from the bottom of springs. The thrush alone declares 

 the immortal wealth and vigor that is in the forest. 

 Here is a bird in whose strain the story is told, though 

 Nature waited for the science of aesthetics to discover 

 it to man. Whenever a man hears it, he is young, and 

 Nature is in her spring. Wherever he hears it, it is 

 a new world and a free country, and the gates of heaven 

 are not shut against him. Most other birds sing from 

 the level of my ordinary cheerful hours — a carol ; but 

 this bird never fails to speak to me out of an ether 

 purer than that I breathe, of immortal beauty and 



1 [The wood pewee.] 



