POLLY'S FAREWELL
List of Illustrations
The Indigo Bird
The Summer Tanager
The Baltimore Oriole
The Bobolink
Last night Alicia wore a Tuscan Sonnet
And many humming birds were fastened on it.
Caught in a net of delicate creamy crepe
The dainty captives lay there dead together;
No dart of slender bill, no fragile shape
Fluttering, no stir of radiant feather;
Alicia looked so calm, I wondered whether
She cared if birds were killed to trim her bonnet.
Her hand fell lightly on my hand;
And I fancied that a stain of death
Like that which doomed the Lady of Macbeth
Was on her hand.
--Elizabeth Cavazza
CHAPTER I
THE ORCHARD
Bobolink, that in the meadow
Or beneath the orchard's shadow
Keepest up a constant rattle,
Joyous as my children's prattle,
Welcome to the North again.
--_Thos. Hill._
My native home was in a pleasant meadow not far from a deep wood, at
some distance from the highway. From this it was separated by plowed
fields and a winding country lane, carpeted with grass and fringed with
daisies.
While it was yet dawn, long before the glint of the sun found its way
through the foliage, the air was musical with the twittering of our
feathered colony.
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