176 
WILD SCENES AND SONG-BIEDS. 
" Art thou the Bird whom man loves best, 
The pious Bird with the scarlet breast, 
Our little English Eobin ?" 
On the Mgliways, in tlie by-ways, from the green lanes, 
the hedge-rows and the gardens, by the lintel near the hearth- 
stone, summer in and winter out, under sunshine, under 
clouds, happy, calm and musical, ever — 
" A life, a Presence like the air 
over merry England and the world will Eobin and the Poet 
go together, 
" Scattering gladness without care." 
But the " Little English Eobin" does not furnish a suffi- 
cient Anti-type to the higher powers of song which distin- 
guish Wordsworth, as well as these gentler graces. Our 
American Eobin, which belongs to the Shaksperian family 
of " The Turdinse," which includes the Mocking Bird and 
the Song Thrush, is, in a better sense, his Anti-type. 
This Bird is as well a social familiar, and builds its woven 
nest upon the limb that leans nearest the homestead walls. 
Many a time have we seen it, about dusk, catch the fire-flies 
within ten feet of the door-sill — as if it swallowed the weird 
light to feed and go flashing through the tender magic of its 
vesper hymn ! And ah ! who — that has heard that vesper 
hymn, beneath the last golden pauses of the twilight, swell 
out as if it took the plaintive echo, of a saddened Human 
heart for key-note, and set it in gradations up through the 
soft notes of Hope to the shrilly clamors of a Joy set free, 
chastened by the memory of prison bars — ^will fail to under- 
stand how the American Eobin is the true Anti-type of 
Wordsworth ! 
But with thee, venerable and most venerated melodist ! 
" Sunset is on the dial," and soon we may expect thee to be 
