Wicker baskets full of pearls with life in them, emeralds with song in them, swinging from bending bough, hidden in the grass, rocking among the rushes, like the little Moses of old, and everybody as loving as Pharaoh's daughter; no serpent in this Eden to charm; no sky scarred with arrows, no plumage ruffled by storm—wouldn't it be a love of a place, that Bird Heaven?
Just a few people that should be forever saying over to themselves, "not a sparrow falleth to the ground without Him," might live there, and the eaves, the chimneys and the peak of the barn-rafters should be full of the twitter of swallows, and the martin-box should never be untenanted. The gate-post should have a cleft for a wren to dwell in; the orchard be filled with the homes of the robin and goldfinch, and the currant-bushes thickly peopled with sparrows; nightingales should sing the night out, and the larks go heavenward to make song in the morning. The plaint of the whip-poor-will should be there, and the mourning of the wood-doves heard from the twilight of the groves. Flotillas of white sea-fowl should float upon the smooth waters, and the mote below the edge of the cloud at anchor far up in the noon, should darken into shape, for an eagle should be there in the sunshine. The old tree-trunks in the pasture should be the homestead of blue-birds all the year long, and the lilacs, like the burning bush of the mountain, should be a-blaze with the wings of red-robin and oriole, and be not consumed.
Time would forget to go on, and would tarry with June in such a midst. And the poet who so plaintively asked,
"Where are the birds that sang
An hundred years ago?"
would find them there, with the sweet old song that charmed an humbler world. And, may be, we should learn the bird language then, and would know what the robins were saying, and the chirping of sparrows be turned to the choicest of English.
There in the meadow, all the days in the year, Robert o' Lincoln should ring his chime of bells; there in the leafy cloisters, "Bob White" should be incessantly called; there on the nodding thistle-blossoms, the yellow-bird should ride as the summer wind went gently by.
And what would a June be without roses? And so the sod should be enameled, and the woods should not be lonely for them. The timid children of the Rainbow, that fled before the plowshare, should grow bold again, and start up like young quails from their hiding, and cluster round the door-stone, and swing themselves up to the roof by green shrouds of their own, and swing themselves down the damp, mossy sides of the spring, and be numbered with the household.
And here, to this Bird Heaven, one should come who all his earthly life long was a loving child of Nature; who saw in the feather fallen from the blue bird in its flight the tinting of the Hand that touched the tented sky with azure; in the red bird's glowing wing, the finger-prints of Him who wove a ribbon of the falling rain, and bound therewith the cloudy brow of storm: Audubon should come and go at will. The freedom of the planet should be his.
And the world adjoining, and lying in full sight, should be a Tophet for the slayers of robins and sparrows; the men whom want of worth makes "fellows"; who lurk about the woods, in the yet unraveled leaf, and prowl in the orchards white with the sweet drift of apple-blossoms, and murder the builders of the homes of song; the ruffians who, in bright top-boots and game-bag cap-a-pie, return elated with two dead blue-birds and a lark without a head, who break a thrush's wing, and misname it "sport," and pass disguised as men. And in that Tophet they should play Nimrod, with kicking muskets shooting empty air; the crows should live with them, and Nero to fiddle for them, and a filer of saws for orchestra; and so, like Alexander the coppersmith, they should be rewarded "according to their works."