If Melendez himself had come to me with flushed face and laughing eyes,
and sat down on the grass at my side to recite one of his most
enchanting poems, I should, with finger on lip, have enjoined silence;
for in the mood I was then in at that sequestered spot, with the
landscape outside my shady green pavilion bathed and quivering in the
brilliant sunshine, this small bird had suddenly become to me more than
any other singer, feathered or human. And yet the tree-pipit is not very
highly regarded among British melodists, on account of the little
variety there is in its song. Nevertheless, it is most sweet--perhaps the
sweetest of all. It is true that there are thousands, nay, millions of
things--sights and sounds and perfumes--which are or may be described as
sweet, so common is the metaphor, and this too common use has perhaps
somewhat degraded it; but in this case there is no other word so well
suited to describe the sensation produced.

The tree-pipit has a comparatively short song, repeated, with some
variation in the number and length of the notes, at brief intervals. The
opening notes are thick and throaty, and similar in character to the
throat-notes of many other species in this group, a softer sound than
the throat-notes of the skylark and woodlark, which they somewhat
resemble. The canary-like trills and thin piping notes, long drawn out,
which follow vary greatly in different individuals, and in many cases
the trills are omitted. But the concluding notes of the song I am
considering--which is only one note repeated again and again--are clear
and beautifully inflected, and have that quality of sweetness, of
lusciousness, I have mentioned. The note is uttered with a downward
fall, more slowly and expressively at each repetition, as if the singer
felt overcome at the sweetness of life and of his own expression, and
languished somewhat at the close; its effect is like that of the perfume