FROM AN ORNITHOLOGIST'S YEAR BOOK. 



THE HEART OF A DRYAD. 

 I. 



It was an oak wood. A few T hickories 

 and chestnuts grew there, but the oaks 

 ruled; great of girth, brawny of limb, 

 with knotted muscles like the figures of 

 Michael Angelo or Tintoretto's workmen 

 in his painting of the Forge of Vulcan. As 

 to coloring, the oaks were of the Venetian 

 painter's following, every oak of them ! 

 In summer they were "men in green," 

 rich, vigorous green, with blue shadows 

 between the rustling boughs ; in early au- 

 tumn, though russet in the shadow, the 

 sunshine showed them a deep and splen- 

 did crimson, pouring through them like a 

 libation to the gods of the lower earth, 

 and to the noble dead, for the Dryad had 

 a heart for heroes and all oak-like men. 



Immediately before the great winds 

 came, stripping them bare, and dashing 

 silver cymbals to wild airs of triumph, 

 they wore a sober brown, but it put on a 

 glow, as of bronze or heated metal after 

 a rain, when the sun's rays smote them 

 with shining spears smiting aslant with 

 unwonted glittering. Under the moon 

 or after a freeze they were all clad in steel, 

 armor of proof, and mighty was the tu- 

 mult, as of meeting swords, when the 

 great boughs swung, and the long icicles 

 fell upon ice below. 



But these days were far off. It was 

 summer, and a crystal brook slipped from 

 level to level, singing its sweet water- 

 song, and bringing cool water to bathe 

 the feet of the oak which the Dryad loved 

 and decked with green garlands. The 

 orioles loved it, flashing here and there 

 with rich red gold or flame-like orange 

 on breast and wings and soft, velvety 

 black on head and shoulders, splendidly 

 beautiful as some tropic flower, they 

 chose the end of an oak bough to hang 

 their pensile nest. The male oriole 

 shone in the sun, but his mate glowed 

 with a duller hue, an orange veiled with 

 gray, and mottled and spotted or splashed 



with white and fuscous and black, as a 

 brooding creature should be that sits all 

 day long amid the play of fleeting light 

 and shade upon constant color. But both 

 were beautiful in their strong and dart- 

 ing flight, and their labors of love. 



The mother alone fashioned the nest, 

 weaving it strongly of grasses and bark, 

 of fibre, hair and string, and lashing it 

 firmly near the end, a hanging cradle for 

 the wind to rock at will and safely, and 

 beautifully adorned with a fantastic pat- 

 tern of green oak leaves, woven across, 

 and aiding to conceal the nest itself. The 

 eggs, four to six, were white, but marked 

 with strange characters, sometimes dis- 

 tinct, sometimes obscure, a hieroglyphic 

 of black or fuscous lines, over which the 

 mother brooded patiently for many days. 

 But the male oriole was not indifferent, 

 even while the young were in the egg. 

 He did not fear to expose himself upon an 

 upper branch, where he could watch un- 

 tiringly over the safety of the beloved 

 nest and all day long, in bright or cloudy 

 weather, floated down to his silent mate 

 a song of courage and tenderness. 



Ah, no shepherds in far-off Arcady 

 ever piped more sweetly to their beloved 

 than this winged lover ! His note is wild 

 and free, a touch of anxious pleading per- 

 haps in the brooding song that one does 

 not catch in the first triumphant cry of 

 joy with which he flashes upon our sight 

 in April, but inexpressibly sweet and 

 liquid. It is essentially music of the pipes, 

 like the soft airs blown by lips of happy 

 children upon reeds cut from the brook- 

 side in the first joyous days of spring, but 

 it is different in its airy quality, as if a 

 melody, unfinished, were floating far 

 above our heads ! They are loving house- 

 holders, and, if undisturbed, will return, 

 year after year, to the same next. 



Happy is the Dryad that dwells in an 

 oak where the orioles build and sing! 



Ella F. Mosby. 



193 



