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. 4 Ecstasy, rapture; extreme delight 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- 9 Incorrigible, beyond correction. 11 Sensualist, one whose whole mind 12 Eschew, avoid; shun. AMONG THE TREES. O YE who love to overhang the springs, 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 Or have ye not Has swept the wood and snapp'd its sturdy stems Nay, doubt we not that under the rough rind, And shrinks from loss of being. Dim and faint Our sorrows touch you not. We watch beside Offer perpetual prayer for life and ease But ye, while anxious fear and fainting hope Moves slowly from the desolate home; our hearts Ye have no part in this distress; for still Make a perpetual murmur of delight, And by whose flowers the humming-bird hangs poised Hums with a louder concert, when the wind As ye are, clothing the broad mountain-side |