'T is there that the wild dove has her nest,
And whenever the branches stir,
She presses closer the eggs to her breast,
And her mate looks down on her.
Clare Beatrice Coffey.
One of the voices that helped to make my June musical, and one more constantly heard than any other, was that of the
"Mourning dove who grieves and grieves,
And lost! lost! lost! still seems to say,"
as the poet has it.
Now, while I dearly love the poets, and always long to enrich my plain prose with gems from their verse, it is sometimes a little embarrassing, because one is obliged to disagree with them. If they would only look a little into the ways of birds, and not assert, in language so musical that one can hardly resist it, that
"The birds come back to last year's nests,"
when rarely was a self-respecting bird known to shirk the labor of building anew for every family; or sing, with Sill,
"He has lost his last year's love, I know,"
when he did not know any such thing; and add,