Celia Leighton Thaxter

Celia Leighton Thaxter was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire in 1835 and spent her childhood on the Isles of Shoals, nine miles off the coast. Her father attended the lighthouse on White Island. Later he built a tourist hotel on Appledore Island. Guests included Nathaniel Hawthorne, Sarah Orne Jewett, and artists Childe Hassam and William Morris Hunt. After she married, she and her husband eventually settled in Newtonville, Massachusetts, near Boston. Her poems were published in the Atlantic Monthly, Scribner's, and Harper's. Her book, Among the Isles of Shoals, appeared in 1873. She died in 1894.

Then out of the high heaven above, at once one hears the happy chorus of the barn swallows; they come rejoicing, their swift wings cleave the blue, they fill the air with woven melody of grace and music. An Island Garden, 1894.

Once a ferruginous thrush came and stayed a week with us in early June. Every day when he perched on a ridge-pole or chimney-top and sang, the whole family turned out in a body to listen, making a business of it, attending to nothing else while that thrilling melody was poured out on the silent air. That was a gift of the gods which we could, none of us, afford to neglect. Ibid.