Love, thought I, is mightier than death and the fear of death; love alone inspires and is the life of all.—Ivan Tourgueneff.
The first sparrow of spring! The year beginning with younger hope than ever! The faint, silvery warblings heard over the partially bare and moist fields from the bluebird, the song sparrow, and the redwing, as if the last flakes of winter tinkled as they fell!—H. D. Thoreau.
I heard a robin in the distance, the first I had heard for many a thousand years, methought, whose note I shall not forget for many a thousand more,—the same sweet, powerful song as of yore.—Ibid.
Walden is melting apace. A great field of ice has cracked off from the main body. I hear a song sparrow from the bushes on the shore,—olit, olit, olit—chip, chip, chip, che char—che wis, wis, wis. He, too, is helping to crack the ice.—Ibid.
The bluebird carries the sky on his back.—Ibid.
6. One of the most interesting features of a Bird Day program will be the personations of birds.
The following was given by a boy in the seventh grade:—
One day in February a gentleman and his wife stopped beside the wall of old Fort Marion, in St. Augustine, to listen to my song. The sun was shining brightly, and little white flowers were blooming in the green turf about the old fort. It was not time yet to build my nest, so I had nothing to do but sing and get my food and travel a little every day toward my Northern home.
I am about as large as a robin, and although there is nothing brilliant in my plumage I am not a homely bird. I like the songs of other birds and sometimes sing them. I frequently sing like my cousins, the catbirds and robins and thrushes. But I have my own song, which is unlike all the others. My mate and I build a large nest of small sticks, pieces of string, cotton, and weeds, in thick bushes or low trees. We have five eggs that are greenish blue and spotted with brown. We eat many beetles, larvæ, and many kinds of insects which we find feeding upon plants. The worst enemy we have is man. He steals our children almost before we have taught them to sing, and puts them in cages. He is a monster.
Many poems have been written about me. One of the finest is by Sidney Lanier, in which he calls me "yon trim Shakespeare on the tree."