I envied him! No lessons, no tasks, no hateful school; nothing but
holiday, frolic, green fields, and fine weather. Had I been then more
versed in poetry, I might have addressed him in the words of Logan to
the cuckoo:

Sweet bird! thy bower is ever green,
Thy sky is ever clear;
Thou hast no sorrow in thy note,
No winter in thy year.

Oh! could I fly, I'd fly with thee;
We'd make, on joyful wing,
Our annual visit round the globe,
Companions of the spring!

Farther observation and experience have given me a different idea of
this little feathered voluptuary, which I will venture to impart, for
the benefit of my school-boy readers, who may regard him with the same
unqualified envy and admiration which I once indulged. I have shown him
only as I saw him at first, in what I may call the poetical part of his
career, when he in a manner devoted himself to elegant pursuits
and enjoyments, and was a bird of music, and song, and taste, and
sensibility, and refinement. While this lasted, he was sacred from
injury; the very school-boy would not fling a stone at him, and the
merest rustic would pause to listen to his strain. But mark the
difference. As the year advances, as the clover-blossoms disappear, and
the spring fades into summer, his notes cease to vibrate on the ear. He
gradually gives up his elegant tastes and habits, doffs his poetical and
professional suit of black, assumes a russet or rather dusty garb, and
enters into the gross enjoyments of common, vulgar birds. He becomes a