WHEN ORCHARDS BLOOM 1 9 



and the boughs are left untrimmed 

 in thriftless beauty. The farm-house, 

 standing only across the road, boasts of 

 young, well-pruned trees, with white- 

 washed trunks; but thrift, alas! is an 

 iconoclast, and the most comfortably 

 crooked boughs are cut away, and 

 there are few worms to tempt bird 

 appetites. Here in this ancient orchard 

 there is no change, except the soft, 

 renewing transmutation of decay. Year 

 by year, the red-eyed vireo or his kin 

 has hung a nest in the russet's forking 

 branch, and called at the children who 

 would boldly peer at it: "You will 

 rue, you will rue, you will rue it." 

 Yellow birds, gay in gamboge and 

 black, who later hang like errant 

 flowers on the thistle stalks, gather 

 here to court and nest and plume the 

 whole summer through, whistling like 

 wild canaries. The king-bird of famed 



