Page:Early Spring in Massachusetts (1881).djvu/126

112 Will you not make me a partner at last? Did it need there should be a conscious material?

My friend! my friend! I'd speak so frank to thee that thou wouldst pray me to keep back some part of it, for fear I robbed myself. To address thee, delights me, there is such clearness in the delivery. I am delivered of my tale, which, told to strangers, still would linger in my life as if untold, or doubtful how it ran.

March 11, 1854. Fair weather after three rainy days. Air full of birds,—bluebirds, song-sparrows, chickadees (phebe-notes), and blackbirds. Song-sparrows toward the water with at least two kinds or variations of their strain hard to imitate,—ozit, ozit, ozit, psa te te te tete ter twe ter, is one. The other began chip, chip che we, etc., etc.

Bluebirds' warbling curls in elms.

Shall the earth be regarded as a graveyard, a necropolis merely, and not also as a granary filled with the seeds of life, fertile compost, not exhausted sand? Is not its fertility increased by decay?

On Tuesday, the 7th, I heard the first song-sparrow chirp; and saw it flit silently from alder to alder. This pleasant morning, after three days' rain and mist, they generally burst forth into sprayey song from the low trees along the river. The development of their song is