and then divide into smaller limbs, then into boughs, into twigs and spray I How the pendulous limbs hang down, and swing in the wind, trailing clouds of greenness close to the ground 1 Look at the leaves, how well made they are! There is cabinet work for you I What joining! How well the colours match! See where the fire-hang-bird has built a nest in one of those pendulous twigs,—just as it used to be fifty years ago! Dr Smith's squirrels will never reach that! What a pretty piece of civil or military engineering it was to put such a dainty nest in such a well-fortified place! How curiously it is made too! Such a nice covering! But here is the father; the mother is in the nest, brooding the little ones — rather late though. Did not marry early, I suppose; could not get ready!
"To choose securely choose in May,
The leaves in autumn fall away."
This is good counsel to bird or man, I suppose. That is right, old fellow! go and carry your wife her breakfast, —or dinner, I suppose it is. But what a blaze of beauty he is, newly kindled there in the boughs! a piece of a rainbow, or a bit of the morning, which got entangled in the tree and torn of. How he sings!—Grisi does not touch that; no, nor Swedish Jenny Lind, with all the Bobolinks of New England in her Swedish throat, as I used, to think. Not up to that, not she 1 Then, too, the very caterpillar he has just caught and now let fall at my feet,—what a handsome thing that is! What eyes ; what stripes of black on his sides, and spots of crimson on his back; what horns tipped with fire on his head! What a rich God it must be who can afford to dress a worm in such magnificence,—a Joseph's coat for a caterpillar! But next summer he will have a yet fairer coat, as he comes out of his minority with his new freedom suit on, and will flutter by all the flowers, himself an animate flower with wings. Butterflies are only masculine flowers, which have fallen in love, and so fly wooing to their quiet feminine mates. Let him go! I am glad the Oriole did not dine on such a meal as that. What a glutton, to eat up a Solomon's Song of loveliness ! which was not only a canticle but a prophecy likewise — of Messianic beauty for next year.
