I'd fly with thee!
We'd make, with joyful wing,
Our annual visit o'er the globe,
Companions of the spring."

6. Further observation and experience have given me a different idea of
this feathered voluptuary, which I will venture to impart for the benefit
of my young readers, who may regard him with the same unqualified envy and
admiration which I once indulged. I have shown him only as I saw him at
first, in what I may call the poetical part of his career, when he, in a
manner, devoted himself to elegant pursuits and enjoyments, and was a bird
of music, and song, and taste, and sensibility, and refinement. While this
lasted he was sacred from injury; the very schoolboy would not fling a
stone at him, and the merest rustic would pause to listen to his strain.

7. But mark the difference. As the year advances, as the clover blossoms
disappear, and the spring fades into summer, he gradually gives up his
elegant tastes and habits, doffs his poetical suit of black, assumes a
russet, dusty garb, and sinks to the gross enjoyment of common vulgar
birds. His notes no longer vibrate on the ear; he is stuffing himself with
the seeds of the tall weeds on which he lately swung and chanted so
melodiously. He has become a bon vivant, a gourmand: with him now there is
nothing like the "joys of the table." In a little while he grows tired of
plain, homely fare, and is off on a gastronomic tour in quest of foreign
luxuries.

8. We next hear of him, with myriads of his kind, banqueting among the
reeds of the Delaware, and grown corpulent with good feeding. He has
changed his name in traveling. Boblincoln no more, he is the reedbird now,
the much-sought-for tidbit of Pennsylvanian epicures, the rival in unlucky
fame of the ortolan! Wherever he goes, pop! pop! pop! every rusty firelock
in the country is blazing away. He sees his companions falling by
thousands around him. Does he take warning and reform? Alas! not he. Again
he wings his flight. The rice swamps of the south invite him. He gorges
himself among them almost to bursting; he can scarcely fly for corpulency.
He has once more changed his name, and is now the famous ricebird of the
Carolinas. Last stage of his career: behold him spitted with dozens of his
corpulent companions, and served up, a vaunted dish, on some southern
table.

9. Such is the story of the bobolink; once spiritual, musical,
admired, the joy of the meadows, and the favorite bird of spring; fin