without their minstrel.

Upon the lofty elm-tree sprays
The vireo rings the changes sweet,
During the trivial summer days,
Striving to lift our thoughts above the street.

With the autumn begins in some measure a new spring. The plover is heard
whistling high in the air over the dry pastures, the finches flit from
tree to tree, the bobolinks and flickers fly in flocks, and the goldfinch
rides on the earliest blast, like a winged hyla peeping amid the rustle of
the leaves. The crows, too, begin now to congregate; you may stand and
count them as they fly low and straggling over the landscape, singly or by
twos and threes, at intervals of half a mile, until a hundred have passed.

I have seen it suggested somewhere that the crow was brought to this
country by the white man; but I shall as soon believe that the white man
planted these pines and hemlocks. He is no spaniel to follow our steps;
but rather flits about the clearings like the dusky spirit of the Indian,
reminding me oftener of Philip and Powhatan, than of Winthrop and Smith.
He is a relic of the dark ages. By just so slight, by just so lasting a
tenure does superstition hold the world ever; there is the rook in
England, and the crow in New England.

Thou dusky spirit of the wood,
Bird of an ancient brood,
Flitting thy lonely way,
A meteor in the summer's day,
From wood to wood, from hill to hill,
Low over forest, field, and rill,