d the expectations excited by the robin and the
song sparrow are fully justified. The thrushes have all come; and I sit
down upon the first rock, with hands full of the pink azalea, to listen.
In the meadows the bobolink is in all his glory; in the high pastures
the field sparrow sings his breezy vesper hymn; and the woods are
unfolding to the music of the thrushes.

FOOTNOTE:

[Footnote 48: By John Burroughs.]

EXPRESSION: Read again the four descriptive selections beginning on
page 179. Observe the wide difference in style of composition. Of
the three prose extracts, which is the most interesting to you?
Give reasons why this is so. Which passages require the most
animation in reading? Read these passages so that those who are
listening to you may fully appreciate their meaning.

THE POET AND THE BIRD

I. THE SONG OF THE LARK

On a pleasant evening in late summer the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and
his wife, Mary Shelley, were walking near the city of Leghorn in Italy.
The sky was cloudless, the air was soft and balmy, and the earth seemed
hushed into a restful stillness. The green lane along which they were
walking was bordered by myrtle hedges, where crickets were softly
chirping and fireflies were already beginning to light their lamps. From
the fields beyond the hedges the grateful smell of new-mown hay was
wafted, while in the hazy distance the church towers of the city glowed
yellow in the last rays of the sun, and the gray-green sea rippled
softly in the fading light of day.

Suddenly, from somewhere above them, a burst of music fell upon their
ears. It receded upward, but swelled into an ecstatic harmony, with
fluttering intervals and melodious swervings such as no musician's art
can imitate.

"What is that?" asked the poet, as the song seemed to die away in the
blue vault of heaven.

"It is a skylark," answered his wife.

"Nay," said the poet, his face all aglow with the joy of the moment; "no
mere bird ever poured forth such strains of music as that. I think,
rather, that it is some blithe spirit embodied as a bird."

"Let us imagine that it is so," said Mary. "But, hearken. It is singing
again, and soaring as it sings."

"Yes, and I can see it, too, like a flake of gold against the pale
purple of the sky. It is so high that it soars in the bright rays of the
sun, while we below are in the twilight shade. And now it is descending
again, and the air is fille