11.  And thumping and plumping and bumping and jumping,
    And dashing and flashing and splashing and clashing;
    And so never ending, but always descending,
    Sounds and motions forever and ever are blending,
      All at once and all o’er, with a mighty uproar,
      And this way the water comes down at Lodore. 
                                      —­Abridged from Southey.

Definitions.—­4.  Tarn, a small lake among the mountains.  Fell (provincial English), a stony hill.  Gills (provincial English), brooks. 10.  Brawl’ing, roaring.  Riv’ing, splitting.

Notes.—­1.  Lodore is a cascade on the banks of Lake Derwentwater, in
Cumberland, England, near where Southey lived.

3.  Laureate.  The term probably arose from a custom in the English universities of presenting a laurel wreath to graduates in rhetoric and versification.  In England the poet laureate’s office is filled by appointment of the lord chamberlain.  The salary is quite small, and the office is valued chiefly as one of honor.

This lesson is peculiarly adapted for practice on the difficult sound “ing”.

XXXIX.  THE BOBOLINK.

1.  The happiest bird of our spring, however, and one that rivals the European lark in my estimation, is the boblincoln, or bobolink as he is commonly called.  He arrives at that choice portion of our year which, in this latitude, answers to the description of the month of May so often given by the poets.  With us it begins about the middle of May, and lasts until nearly the middle of June.  Earlier than this, winter is apt to return on its traces, and to blight the opening beauties of the year; and later than this, begin the parching, and panting, and dissolving heats of summer.  But in this genial interval, Nature is in all her freshness and fragrance:  “the rains are over and gone, the flowers appear upon the earth, the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in the land.”

2.  The trees are now in their fullest foliage and brightest verdure; the woods are gay with the clustered flowers of the laurel; the air is perfumed with the sweetbrier and the wild rose; the meadows are enameled with clover blossoms; while the young apple, peach, and the plum begin to swell, and the cherry to glow among the green leaves.

3.  This is the chosen season of revelry of the bobolink.  He comes amid the pomp and fragrance of the season; his life seems all sensibility and enjoyment, all song and sunshine.  He is to be found in the soft bosoms of the freshest and sweetest meadows, and is most in song when the clover is in blossom.  He perches on the topmost twig of a tree, or on some long, flaunting weed, and, as he rises and sinks with the breeze, pours forth a succession of rich, tinkling notes, crowding one upon another, like the outpouring melody of the skylark, and possessing the same rapturous character.