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I may call the poetical part of his career, when he in a manner devoted himself to elegant pursuits and enjoyments, and was a bird of music and song and taste and sensibility and refinement.

While this lasted he was sacred from injury; the very schoolboy would not fling a stone at him, and the merest rustic would pause to listen to his strain. mark the difference.

But

As the year advances, as the clover-blossoms disappear, and the spring fades away into summer, he gradually gives up his elegant tastes and habits, doffs his poetical suit of black, assumes a russet, dusty garb, and sinks to the gross enjoyments of common vulgar birds.

His notes no longer vibrate on the ear; he is stuffing himself with the seeds of the tall weeds on which he lately swung and chanted so melodiously. He has become a gourmand. With him now there is nothing like the "joys of the table."

In a little while he grows tired of plain homely fare, and is off on a gastronomical tour in quest of foreign luxuries. We next hear of him, with myriads of his kind, banqueting among the reeds of the Delaware, and grown corpulent with good feeding.

8

He has changed his name in travelling. Bob-o-lincoln no more, he is the reed-bird now, the much-sought titbit of Pennsylvania epicures, the rival in unlucky fame of the ortolan! Wherever he goes, pop! pop! pop! every rusty firelock in the country is blazing away. He sees his companions falling by thousands and tens of thousands around him.

Does he take warning and reform ?—Alas, not he! Incorrigible epicure! again he wings his flight. The rice-swamps of the south invite him. He gorges him

self among them almost to bursting; he can scarcely fly for corpulency.10 He has once more changed his name, and is now the famous rice-bird of the Carolinas.

Last stage of his career, -- behold him spitted, with dozens of his corpulent companions, and served up, a vaunted dish, on the table of some southern epicure.

Such is the story of the bobolink; once spiritual, musical, admired, the joy of the meadows, and the favourite bird of spring; finally, a gross little sensualist, who expiates his sensuality " in the kitchen.

His story contains a moral worthy the attention of all little birds and little boys; warning them to keep to those refined and intellectual pursuits which raised him to so high a degree of popularity during the early part of his career, but to eschew 12 all tendency to that gross and dissipated indulgence which brought this mistaken. little bird to an untimely end.

1 Sensibility, keenness of feeling.
2 Flaunting, showy; waving to and
fro, as if to attract attention.
3 Rapturous, extremely delightful
(Lat. raptus, snatched away);
"rapture," a state of feeling as if
snatched away from earth to
heaven.

4 Ecstasy, rapture; extreme delight
(Gr. ek, out of; stasis, a standing.)
"Ecstasy," a state of feeling as if
standing out of one's ordinary
self; as if lifted far above oneself.
5 Voluptuary. one excessively fond
of pleasure. (Lat. voluptas, plea-
sure.)

6 Gourmand, a glutton.

7 Gastronomical tour, a journey in search of delicacies for eating. (Gr. gaster, the belly.)

8 Epicure, one skilled in the delica-
cies of the table. (The Epicureans
were a class of people who were
supposed to act on the principle-
"Let us eat and drink, for to-mor-
row we die.")

9 Incorrigible, beyond correction.
10 Corpulent, stout. (Lat. corpus, the
body.)

11 Sensualist, one whose whole mind
is set on gratifying his bodily ap
petites.

12 Eschew, avoid; shun.

AMONG THE TREES.

O YE who love to overhang the springs,
And stand by running waters, ye whose boughs
Make beautiful the rocks o'er which they play,
Who pile with foliage the great hills, and rear
A paradise upon the lonely plain,

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Trees of the forest, and the open field!

Have ye no sense of being?

Does the air, The pure air, which I breathe with gladness, pass In gushes o'er your delicate lungs, your leaves, All unenjoy'd? When on your winter sleep 2 The sun shines warm, have you no dreams of spring? And when the glorious spring-time comes at last, Have ye no joy of all your bursting buds,

And fragrant blooms, and melody of birds,

To which your young leaves shiver? Do ye strive
And wrestle with the wind, yet know it not?
Feel ye no glory in your strength when he,
The exhausted Blusterer, flies beyond the hills,
And leaves you stronger yet?

Or have ye not
A sense of loss when he has stripp'd your leaves,
Yet tender, and has splinter'd your fair boughs?
Does the loud bolt 4 that smites you from the cloud,
And rends you, fall unfelt? Do there not run
Strange shudderings through your fibres when the axe
Is raised against you, and the shining blade
Deals blow on blow, until, with all their boughs,
Your summits waver, and ye fall to earth?
Know ye no sadness when the hurricane

Has swept the wood and snapp'd its sturdy stems
Asunder, or has wrench'd, from out the soil,
The mightiest, with their circles of strong roots,
And piled the ruin all along his path?

Nay, doubt we not that under the rough rind,
In the green veins of these fair growths of earth,
There dwells a nature that receives delight
From all the gentle processes of life,

And shrinks from loss of being. Dim and faint
May be the sense of pleasure and of pain,
As in our dreams; but, haply real still.

Our sorrows touch you not. We watch beside
The beds of those who languish or who die,
And minister in sadness, while our hearts

Offer perpetual prayer for life and ease
And health to the beloved sufferers.

But ye, while anxious fear and fainting hope
Are in our chambers, ye rejoice without.
The funeral goes forth, a silent train

Moves slowly from the desolate home; our hearts
Are breaking as we lay away the loved,
Whom we shall see no more, in their last rest,
Their little cells within the burial-place.

Ye have no part in this distress; for still
The February sunshine steeps your boughs,
And tints the buds and swells the leaves within ;
While the song-sparrow, warbling from her perch,
Tells you that spring is near. The wind of May
Is sweet with breath of orchards, in whose boughs
The bees and every insect of the air

Make a perpetual murmur of delight,

And by whose flowers the humming-bird hangs poised
In air, and draws their sweets and darts away.
The linden, in the fervours of July,"

Hums with a louder concert, when the wind
Sweeps the broad forest in its summer prime.
As when some master-hand exulting sweeps
The keys of some great organ, ye give forth
The music of the woodland depths, a hymn
Of gladness and of thanks. The hermit-thrush
Pipes his sweet note to make your arches ring;
The faithful robin, from the wayside elm,
Carols all day to cheer his sitting mate;
And when the autumn comes, the kings of earth,
In all their majesty, are not array'd

As ye are, clothing the broad mountain-side
And spotting the smooth vales with red and gold;
While, swaying to the sudden breeze, ye fling
Your nuts to earth, and the brisk squirrel comes
To gather them, and barks with childish glee,
And scampers with them to his hollow oak.

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