He is the peace-harbinger; in him the
celestial and terrestrial strike hands and are fast friends. He means
the furrow and he means the warmth; he means all the soft, wooing
influences of the spring on one hand, and the retreating footsteps of
winter on the other.
It is sure to be a bright March morning when you first hear his note;
and it is as if the milder influences up above had found a voice and
let a word fall upon your ear, so tender is it and so prophetic, a
hope tinged with a regret.
"Bermuda! Bermuda! Bermuda!" he seems to say, as if both invoking and
lamenting, and, behold! Bermuda follows close, though the little
pilgrim may only be repeating the tradition of his race, himself
having come only from Florida, the Carolinas, or even from Virginia,
where he has found his Bermuda on some broad sunny hillside thickly
studded with cedars and persimmon-trees.
In New York and in New England the sap starts up in the sugar maple
the very day the bluebird arrives, and sugar-making begins forthwith.
The bird is generally a mere disembodied voice; a rumor in the air for
tow of three days before it takes visible shape before you.
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