440 
THE SKYLAEK'S SONG. 
indistinguishable from the stubble or bent among which the nest is 
placed ; while, inside, a lining of fine vegetable fibre protects the eggs, 
and afterwards the young, from injury. The skylark, it is worth 
noticing, prefers the vicinity of human habitations to the wilderness 
and the uncultivated plain. No sooner has man ploughed up the 
waste, and made the corn to grow where formerly throve only the 
rank vegetation of rush and bramble, heath and moss, than, though 
before unknown, the skylark comes with joyous song, as if to cheer 
the labourer in his toil. And what a song it is ! How bright, how 
exquisite, how thrilling ! Listen, listen ! Is it not like a lyrical out- 
burst of mingled gratitude and joy ? At heaven's gate it echoes, as if 
to raise our thoughts above the world and its anxieties to the Giver 
of all Good. The higher the singer ascends, the loftier seems his song. 
If it breathes of the flowers and the leaves of the earth where he 
dwells, it breathes also of the Ught and the glory of the aerial heights to 
which his venturous wing has carried him. 
" Ethereal minstrel ! pilgrim of the sky ! 
Dost thou despise the earth where cares abound? 
Or while thy wings aspire, are heart and eye 
Both with thy nest upon the dewy ground? 
Thy nest, which thou canst drop into at will, 
Those quivering wings composed, and music still. 
" To the last point of vision, and beyond, 
Mount, daring warbler; that love- prompted strain, 
'Twixt thee and thine a never-failing bond, 
Thrills not the less the bosom of the plain ; 
Yet mightst thou seem, proud privilege, to sing 
All independent of the leafy spring. 
" Leave to the nightingale the shady wood; 
A privacy of glorious light is thine, 
Whence thou dost pour upon the earth a flood 
Of harmony, with rapture more divine. 
Type of the wise, who soar but never roam, 
True to the kindred points of heaven and home." 
THE SAND-MARTIN. 
But the strain of the sk^dark has carried us away from our subject. 
From nests woven and pensile, we now turn to the burrow of the 
sand-martin, which, with tiny bill, he contrives to excavate in the solid 
