RUSTLING WINGS 



" All the feathered airy nation, 

 Birds of every size and station, 

 Are convened in convocation. 



How they thicken, how they muster, 

 How they clutter, how they cluster ! 

 Now they ramble here and thither, 

 Now they scramble all together." 



Aristophanes' Birds (Frere's trans.). 



The wood swallows began it and 

 signalled the grackles, or perhaps the 

 grackles, chattering in the trees, so 

 jarred upon the nerves of the swallows 

 that they fled to the dunes, where there 

 are no echoes. 



It was the first of September, and 

 I was gathering sea-lavender on the 

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