“For with a lark’s heart he doth tower,
By a glorious upward instinct drawn;
No bee nestles deeper in the flower
Than he in the bursting rose of dawn.”
It almost throws one into “a midsummer night’s dream” to read this picturesque line,—
“The clouds like swans drift down the streaming atmosphere.”
That must have been an expressive face indeed whose features were
“As full of motion as a nest
That palpitates with unfledged birds,”
albeit one may be permitted to hope, without irreverence, that it made a more attractive picture than did the callow youngsters gaping and wabbling in their nursery. But here is a delineation of bird life so graphically and richly colored that one longs for the brush of the artist to transfer it to canvas. Listen! listen! There is an exhilarant in the atmosphere.