[3] This bird, which is so well described by Nuttall, but is
apparently unknown by the author of the Report, is one of the most
common in the woods in this vicinity, and in Cambridge I have heard
the college yard ring with its trill. The boys call it “_yorrick_,”
from the sound of its querulous and chiding note, as it flits near the
traveller through the underwood. The cowbird’s egg is occasionally
found in its nest, as mentioned by Audubon.
[1] _Reports—on the Fishes, Reptiles, and Birds; the Herbaceous Plants
and Quadrupeds; the Insects Injurious to Vegetation; and the
Invertebrate Animals of Massachusetts_. Published agreeably to an
Order of the Legislature, by the Commissioners on the Zoölogical and
Botanical Survey of the State.
A WALK TO WACHUSETT.
[1843.]
The needles of the pine
All to the west incline.
CONCORD, _July_ 19, 1842.
Summer and winter our eyes had rested on the dim outline of the
mountains in our horizon, to which distance and indistinctness lent a
grandeur not their own, so that they served equally to interpret all
the allusions of poets and travellers; whether with Homer, on a spring
morning, we sat down on the many-peaked Olympus, or, with Virgil and
his compeers, roamed the Etrurian and Thessalian hills, or with
Humboldt measured the more modern Andes and Teneriffe. Thus we spoke
our mind to them, standing on the Concord cliffs.—
With frontier strength ye stand your ground,
With grand content ye circle round,
Tumultuous silence for all sound,
Ye distant nursery of rills,
Monadnock, and the Peterboro’ hills;
Like some vast fleet,
Sailing through rain and sleet,
Through winter’s cold and summer’s heat;
Still holding on, upon your high emprise,
Until ye find a shore amid the skies;
Not skulking close to land,
With cargo contraband.
For they who sent a venture out by ye
Have set the sun to see
Their honesty.
Ships of the line, each one,
Ye to the westward run,
Always before the gale,
Under a press of sail,
With weight of metal all untold.
I seem to feel ye, in my firm seat here,
Immeasurable depth of hold,
And breadth of beam, and length of running gear.
Methinks ye take luxurious pleasure
In your novel western leisure;
So cool your brows, and freshly blue,
As Time had nought for ye to do;
For ye lie at your length,
An unappropriated strength,
Unhewn primeval timber,
For knees so stiff, for masts so limber;
The stock of which new earths are made,
One day to be our western trade,
Fit for the stanchions of a world
Which through the seas of space is hurled.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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