382 NOTES ON NEW ENGLAND BIRDS 



dew on the grass, and the day is forever- unproved, 

 where I might have a fertile unknown for a soil about 

 me. I would go after the cows, I would watch the flocks 

 of Admetus there forever, only for my board and 

 clothes. A New Hampshire everlasting and unfallen. 



All that was ripest and fairest in the wilderness and 

 the wild man is preserved and transmitted to us in 

 the strain of the wood thrush. It is the mediator be- 

 tween barbarism and civilization. It is unrepentant as 

 Greece. 



Dec. 31, 1853. There are a few sounds still which 

 never fail to affect me. The notes of the wood thrush 

 and the sound of a vibrating chord, these affect me as 

 many sounds once did often, and as almost all should. 

 The strains of the seolian harp and of the wood thrush 

 are the truest and loftiest preachers that I know now 

 left on this earth. I know of no missionaries to us hea- 

 then comparable to them. They, as it were, lift us up 

 in spite of ourselves. They intoxicate, they charm us. 



May 28, 1855. While we sit by the path in the 

 depths of the woods three quarters of a mile beyond 

 Hayden's, confessing the influence of almost the first 

 summer warmth, the wood thrush sings steadily for half 

 an hour, now at 2.30 P. M., amid the pines, — loud and 

 clear and sweet. While other birds are warbling between- 

 whiles and catching their prey, he alone appears to 

 make a business of singing, like a true minstrel. 



July 31, 1858. Got the wood thrush's nest of June 

 19th (now empty). It was placed between many small 

 upright shoots, against the main stem of the slender 



