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Updated: July 21, 2025


To this same hemlock grove I was in the habit, in those days, of going now and then to listen to the evening hymn of the veery, or Wilson thrush. Here, if nowhere else, might be heard music fit to be called sacred.

When year after year you have heard the veery in the beech and birch woods along the trout streams, or the wood thrush May after May in the groves where you have walked or sat, and the bobolink summer after summer in the home meadows, or the vesper sparrow in the upland pastures where you have loitered as a boy or mused as a man, these birds will really be woven into the texture of your life.

He did not, like the robin on similar duty, stand on some conspicuous perch like a statue of horror or dismay, uttering his loudest "peep! peep!" in warning to the whole feathered world; nor did he, after the fashion of the song sparrow, fill the air with distressed "pips" that seemed to hint of mischief dire; neither did he, as does the red squirrel, resent an intrusion into preserves that he considered his own, with a maddening series of choking cries, coughs, and "snickers," till one was almost ready to turn a gun upon him; still less did he, in veery style, utter wails so despairing that one felt herself a monster for remaining.

It was a restful lullaby like ,the mingled benediction of wood and sea on the tired spirits of weary travelers. It had in it nothing of "pride or passion," but contained the same serene harmony that vagrant breezes draw from the myriad-stringed pines; something of the melodies breathed from the ocean. It proved to be the evening hymn of the veery.

It was still early spring, and the leaves were tiny. On the top of a small sumac, not thirty feet away from me, sat a veery. I could see the pointed spots upon his breast, the swelling of his white throat, and the sparkle of his eyes, as he poured his whole heart into a long liquid chant, the clear notes rising and falling, echoing and interlacing in endless curves of sound,

The moonbeams over Arno's vale in silver flood were pouring, When first I heard the nightingale a long-lost love deploring: So passionate, so full of pain, it sounded strange and eerie, I longed to hear a simpler strain, the wood-notes of the veery.

The sylvan prince could not think of returning to court in this plight, and so, amid the falling leaves and cold rains of autumn, was patiently biding his time. The soft, mellow flute of the veery fills a place in the chorus of the woods that the song of the vesper sparrow fills in the chorus of the fields. It has the nightingale's habit of singing in the twilight, as indeed have all our thrushes.

I see by his impulsive, graceful movements, and his dimly speckled breast, that it is a thrush. Presently he utters a few soft, mellow, flute-like notes, one of the most simple expressions of melody to be heard, and scuds away, and I see it is the veery, or Wilson's thrush.

If it has less variety, and perhaps less rapture, than the song of the wood-thrush, it is marked by greater simplicity and ease; and if it does not breathe the ineffable tranquillity of the veery's strain, it comes to my ear, at least, with a still nobler message. The hermit's note is aspiration rather than repose. "Peace, peace!" says the veery, but the hermit's word is, "Higher, higher!"

He was the exact image of his parents; I should have known him anywhere, the same soft, tawny back, and light under-parts, but no tail to be seen, and only a dumpy pair of wings, which would not bear him very far. The feathers of his side looked rough, and not fully out, but his head was lovely and his eye was the wild free eye of a veery. I saw the youngster utter his cry.

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