Page:Early Spring in Massachusetts (1881).djvu/183

Rh vegetation, our life seems reduced to its lowest terms. But let a bluebird come and warble over them, and what a change! The note of the first bluebird in the air answers to the purling rill of melted snow beneath. It is evidently soft and soothing, and, as surely as the thermometer, indicates a higher temperature. It is the accent of the south wind, its vernacular. It is modulated by the south wind.

The song-sparrow is more sprightly, mingling its notes with the rustling of the brush along the water sides, but it is at the same time more terrene than the bluebird. The first woodpecker comes screaming into the empty house, and throws open doors and windows wide, calling out each of them to let the neighbors know of its return. But heard farther off it is very suggestive of ineffable associations, which cannot be distinctly recalled, of long-drawn summer hours, and thus it also has the effect of music. I was not aware that the capacity to hear the woodpecker had slumbered within me so long. When the blackbird gets to a conqueree he seems to be dreaming of the sprays that are to be and on which he will perch. The robin does not come singing, but utters a somewhat anxious or inquisitive peep at first. The song-sparrow is immediately most at home of those I have named.