The most melodious of our songsters, the wood thrush and the hermit
thrush,--birds whose strains, more than any others, express harmony
and serenity,--have not yet, that I am aware, had reared to them
their merited poetic monument, unless, indeed, Whitman has done
this service for the hermit thrush in his "President Lincoln's
Burial Hymn." Here the threnody is blent of three chords, the
blossoming lilac, the evening star, and the hermit thrush, the
latter playing the most prominent part throughout the composition.
It is the exalting and spiritual utterance of the "solitary singer"
that calms and consoles the poet when the powerful shock of the
President's assassination comes upon him, and he flees from the
stifling atmosphere and offensive lights and conversation of the
house,--

"Forth to hiding, receiving night that talks not,
Down to the shores of the water, the path by the swamp in the dimness,
To the solemn shadowy cedars and ghostly pines so still."

Numerous others of our birds would seem to challenge attention by
their calls and notes. There is the Maryland yellowthroat, for
instance, standing in the door of his bushy tent, and calling out
as you approach, _"which way, sir! which way, sir!"_ If he says
this to the ear of common folk, what would he not say to the poet?
One of the peewees says _"stay there!"_ with great emphasis. The
cardinal grosbeak calls out _"what cheer" "what cheer;"" the
bluebird says _"purity," "purity," "purity;"_ the brown thrasher,
or ferruginous thrush, according to Thoreau, calls out to the
farmer planting his corn, _"drop it," "drop it," "cover it up,"
"cover it up"_ The yellow-breasted chat says _"who," "who"_ and
_"tea-boy"_ What the robin says, caroling that simple strain from