AND now there is such a fiddling in the woods, such a viol creaking of
bough on bough that you would think music was being born again as in the
days of Orpheus. Orpheus and Apollo are certainly there taking lessons;
aye, and the Jay and Blackbird, too, learn now where they stole their
"thunder." They are perforce, silent, meditating new strains.
* * * *
Methinks I would share every creature's suffering for the sake of its
experience and joy. The Song Sparrow and the transient Fox-colored Sparrow,
have they brought me no message this year? Is not the coming of the
Fox-colored Sparrow something more earnest and significant than I have
dreamed of? Have I heard what this tiny passenger has to say while it flits
thus from tree to tree? God did not make this world in jest, no, nor in
indifference. These migratory Sparrows all bear messages that concern my
life. I love the birds and beasts because they are mythologically in
earnest. I see the Sparrow chirps, and flits, and sings adequately to the
great design of the universe, that man does not communicate with it,
understand its language, because he is not alone with nature. I reproach
myself because I have regarded with indifference the passage of the birds.
I have thought them no better than I.
* * * *
I hear the note of a Bobolink concealed in the top of an apple tree behind
me. Though this bird's full strain is ordinarily somewhat trivial, this one
appears to be meditating a strain as yet unheard in meadow or orchard. He
is just touching the strings of his theorbo, his glassichord, his water
organ, and one or two notes globe themselves and fall in liquid bubbles
from his tuning throat. It is as if he touched his harp within a vase of
liquid melody, and when he lifted it out the notes fell like bubbles from
the trembling strings. Methinks they are the most liquidly sweet and
melodious sounds I ever heard. They are as refreshing to my ear as the
first distant tinkling and gurgling of a rill to a thirsty man. Oh, never
advance farther in your art; never let us hear your full strain, sir! But
away he launches, and the meadow is all bespattered with melody. Its notes
fall with the apple blossoms in the orchard. The very divinest part of his
strain drops from his overflowing breast _singultim_, in globes of melody.
It is the foretaste of such strains as never fell on mortal ears, to hear
which we should rush to our doors and contribute all that we possess and
are. Or it seemed as if in that vase full of melody some notes sphered
themselves, and from time to time bubbled up to the surface, and were with
difficulty repressed.
--_Thoreau._
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