One of the voices that helped to make my June musical, and one more constantly heard than any other, was that of the "Mourning dove who grieves and grieves, And lost! lost! lost! still seems to say," as the poet has it. Now, while I dearly love the poets, and always long to enrich my plain prose with gems from their verse, it is sometimes a little embarrassing, because one is obliged to disagree with them. If they would only look a little into the ways of birds, and not assert, in language so musical that one can hardly resist it, that "The birds come back to last year's nests," when rarely was a self-respecting bird known to shirk the labor of building anew for every family; or sing, with Sill, "He has lost his last year's love, I know," when he did not know any such thing; and add, "A thrush forgets in a year," which I call a libel on one of our most intelligent birds; or cry, with another singer, "O voiceless swallow," when not one of the whole tribe is defrauded of a voice, and at least one is an exquisite singer; or accuse the nightingale of the superfluous idiocy of holding his (though they always say her) breast to a thorn as he sings, as if he were so foolish as to imitate some forms of human self-torture,--if they would only be a little more sure of their facts, what a comfort it would be to those who love both poets and birds! No bird in our country is more persistently misrepresented by our sweet singers than the Carolina or wood dove--mourning dove, as he is popularly called; and in this case they are not to be blamed, for prose writers, even natural history writers, are quite as bad. "His song consists," says one, "of four notes: the first seems to be uttered with an inspiration of the breath, as if the afflicted creature were just recovering its voice from the last convulsive sob of distress, and followed by three long, deep, and mournful moanings, that no person of sensibility can listen to without sympathy." "The solemn voice of sorrow," another writer calls it. All this is mere sentimentality, pure imagination; and if the writers could sit, as I have, under the tree when the bird was singing, they would change their opinion, though they would thereby lose a pretty and attractive sentiment for their verse. I believe there is "No beast or bird in earth or sky, Whose voice doth not with gladness thrill," though it may not so express itself to our senses. Certainly the coo of the dove is anything but sad when heard very near. It has a rich, far-off sound, expressing deep serenity, and a happiness beyond words.