Chapter XVIII: A Bird Anthology from Lowell 242 (7)

But what was that sharp chirp? It instantly drew my thoughts from the marsh itself and the poet’s tribute. Opera-glass in hand, I softly stole near the bushy clump from which the sound came. Ah! there the bird was, tilting uneasily on a slender twig. The swamp-sparrow! It was the first time I had positively identified this bird in my own neighborhood,—not, I suppose, because it had not been present often and again, but because I had been too dull of sight to see it. Then came a glad memory. I recalled the peculiar circumstances under which I had seen my first swamp-sparrow, hundreds of miles away. During a visit to Boston and vicinity, a year prior, I spent a never-to-be-forgotten afternoon with Bradford Torrey, who needs no introduction to intelligent readers. We walked out to some of his favorite haunts. It was an ideal October day, and the charming New England landscape threw a spell over me that gave me a kind of other-worldly feeling. My companion was all I had expected him to be, and more,—a good talker and an appreciative listener,—and even now, when I recall my saunter with this quiet, gentle bird-lover, it seems more like a dream than a reality.

The afternoon had slipped well by when we came to a bush-fringed brook and Mr. Torrey told me that there were swamp-sparrows in the thickets. “How much I should like to see one!” I cried. “The swamp-sparrow is a stranger to me.” “You shall have your wish gratified,” he replied; and forthwith he climbed the fence, stalked to the other side of the stream, and slowly, gently drove the chirping sparrows toward me, so that I could see their markings plainly with my glass. How lovingly I ogled them! I could not get my fill of the birds shown me by one whom I had loved so long at a distance. It was an epoch in my poor life,—an epoch in a double sense. Who will censure my feeling of gratified pride? In the evening, after our stroll, as we walked to and fro on the platform at the railway-station waiting for the train to start, I remarked: “Mr. Torrey, I shall never forget my first meeting with the swamp-sparrow.”

“No,” he responded innocently, as if my humble remembrance would confer an honor upon him; “whenever you see that bird hereafter, you will think of me, won’t you?” I told him I should; and that evening in the marsh, a year later, I kept my tryst with memory, while tears, half sad, half glad, dimmed my eyes.

But hark! A little farther on, from the sparse bushes of a grassy bank, came the swinging treble of a white-throated sparrow, like a votive offering. What enchantment possessed the birds that evening? Had Orpheus with his miracle-working harp come back to earth? I was half tempted to believe for the nonce in the transmigration of souls, for the notes drifted so sadly sweet on the still air, as if the fabled minstrel had indeed returned to mundane realms. Among the thick clusters of weeds and bushes that fringed a railway, which I pursued in my homeward walk, many birds were going to roost,—sparrows, warblers, red-winged blackbirds, and cardinal grossbeaks. My passing along alarmed them, and sent them dashing from their leafy couches.

Thus the afternoon passed. I had not, perhaps, learned as many new things about my kinsmen in plumes as on many other rambles, but I had discovered the secret of appreciation; that the mind must be unharassed by carking care or depressing sorrow to win the best from Nature. Give me a lightsome heart, and I will trudge with any pedestrian. Give me a heavy heart, and the weight clings to the soles of my feet like barnacles to a ship’s bottom. Given the proper mood, the lines of an American poet—no need to mention his name—have the ring of gospel truth,—

“Nature, the supplement of man,
His hidden sense interpret can;
What friend to friend cannot convey
Shall the dumb bird instructed say.”

XVII.
BROWSINGS IN OTHER FIELDS.

Even the most home-loving body may sometimes gain refreshment, and at the same time have his mental vision broadened, by a jaunt to another neighborhood; and if he has a hobby, he may beguile the days in riding it, and thus evade, for a time at least, that most harrowing of all maladies, homesickness. Well, to make a long story short, and a dull one a little brighter, let me say at once that I have, more or less recently, made several visits to various points of interest, and everywhere have found delightful comradeship with the birds. First, I shall speak of a trip to Montreal, that gem city on the St. Lawrence, beautiful for situation as well as for other attractive features.

South of the city a mountain rears its green, symmetrical mass. True, it is not very lofty as mountains go; but standing there alone in the midst of a far stretching plain, it seems really majestic, especially to one unused to great altitudes. It is a favorite pleasure-resort for residents and visitors, having been converted into a beautiful park, with winding paths and driveways, many shady nooks, with comfortable benches to lounge on, and a tower on the summit, from which you can look down upon a scene that is really enchanting. Nestling at the foot of the mountain is the city, with its towers, steeples, well-laid streets, and palatial residences; curving and gleaming far to the northeast and southwest is the mighty St. Lawrence, its green banks holding it in loving embrace far as the eye can reach; in another direction you trace the Ottawa River meandering far to the northwest like a ribbon of silver, and dividing into two branches a few miles away, thus forming the island of Montreal; beyond the St. Lawrence is the Lake of Two Mountains, and far away in the misty distance toward the south and southwest, are the blue outlines of the Green and Adirondack ranges; in other directions the plain stretches level until it melts in the hazy distance, and is dotted with farm-houses, villages, well-cultivated fields, and green woodlands.

One afternoon a few unoccupied hours were at my disposal. I determined to spend them on Mount Royal, as the eminence is called. A car wheels you up an inclined plane, almost perpendicular near the top, at least two-thirds of the way to the summit. Having filled myself with the scene from the tower, I was starting off to make a tour of the park, when my footsteps were arrested by a quaint new song coming from a clump of trees farther down the declivity. Interest in everything else vanished in a moment. A good deal of time was spent before I could get a sight of the minstrel. Much to my surprise, he turned out to be a thrush; the species, however, could not be determined at the time for lack of my opera-glass, as the bird was perched rather high in a tree. In the brief time at my disposal just then, I saw a number of other birds, and resolved to spend a day on the mountain studying them, as soon as other duties would permit.

That day came in good time. An early morning hour found me skirting the steep sides of the mountain, alert for feathered dwellers. It was the tenth of July, too late for the best songs and for finding birds in the nest, and yet I felt fairly well satisfied with the results of the day’s excursion. Presently the song of the thrush, whose identity I had come to settle, was heard in the copse. A look at him with my glass proved him to be the veery, or Wilson’s thrush, only a migrant in my State, and one that pursues his pilgrimage both to the north and south in patience-trying silence.

To my ear the song was sweet, almost hauntingly so. Some notes were quite like certain strains of the wood-thrush’s rich song, but others seemed more ringing and bell-like, and the whole tune was more skilfully and smoothly rendered,—that is, with less labored effort. Still, I am loath to say that the general effect of this bird’s song is more pleasing than that of the wood-thrush, for there is something far-away and dreamy about the minstrelsy of the latter that one does not hear in the song of any other species.

The veeries evidently had nests or younglings among the bushes, for they called in harsh, alarmed tones as I entered their secluded haunts, but I had not the good fortune to find a nest. Indeed, it was too late to discover any nests at all, except such as had been deserted. But, to my great delight, I found that the jolly juncos breed on the mountain, for there they were carrying food to their little ones, which had left the nursery and were ensconced in the thick foliage. These birds are winter residents in my own neighborhood, but in the spring they hie to this and other localities of the same and higher latitudes to spend the summer. It was refreshing to meet my little winter intimates. They were quite lyrical, but their little trills did not seem any more tuneful here in their breeding-haunts than in their winter residences, especially when Spring pours her subtle essence into their veins.

Nothing surprised me more than to find song-sparrows on the top of the mountain, whereas they are usually the tenants of the swamps and other lowlands in my neighborhood. Here they were rearing families on the mountain’s crest as well as along the streams that laved the mountain’s base. They also sang their tinkling roundels in both places, sometimes ringing them out so loudly that they could be distinctly heard above the clatter of the street cars.

At one place, in a cluster of half-dead trees and saplings, a colony of warblers were tilting about; all of them only migrants about my home in Ohio, but breeding here. There were old and young creeping warblers, the elders singing their trills in lively fashion, and the young ones twittering coaxingly for food. Here were also a number of redstarts,—sonnets in black and gold,—the young beseeching their parents constantly for more luncheon. A beautiful chestnut-sided warbler wheeled into sight and reeled off his jolly little trill, and then gave his half-grown baby a tidbit from his beak. On another part of the mountain the song of a black-throated green warbler fell pensively on the ear, coming from the thick branches of a tall tree, like a requiem from a broken heart. Presently he flitted down into plain view, his curiosity drawing him toward his auditor sitting beneath on the grass. No doubt his mate was crouched on her nest far up in one of the trees.

In a thicket on the acclivity of the mountain, I heard a loud, appealing call, which was new to me; and yet it evidently came from the throat of a young bird pleading for its dinner. By dint of a good deal of peering about and patient waiting, I at length found it to be a juvenile chestnut-sided warbler. Lying on the ground beneath the green canopy of the bushes, I watched it a long time, hoping to see the old bird feed it; but she was too shy to come near, although the youngster grew almost desperate in its entreaties. An old nest in the crotch of a sapling near at hand announced where the little fellow had, no doubt, been hatched. It was a beautiful nest, as compactly built as the cottage of a goldfinch, and was decorated, like a red-eyed vireo’s nest, with tiny balls of spider-web and strips of paper.

Not far away from this charmed spot a red-eyed vireo had hung her basket to the horizontal fork of a small swaying branch. It was still fresh, and in such good condition as to convince me that it had just been completed by the little basket-maker, which had not yet deposited her dainty eggs in the cup. No other bird on the mountain sang as much as this vireo, with the sharp red eyes and golden breast. On the whole, I doubt not that Mount Royal would be an almost ideal place for bird study, if one could spend the month of June on its wooded summit, slopes, and acclivities.

The next visit to be described was made to the somewhat celebrated Zoölogical Garden at Cincinnati, Ohio, which contains a really magnificent collection of animals and birds. However, a description of the latter must suffice, although the animals interested me almost as deeply. There are many cages and aviaries containing rare species of feathered folk, the only difficulty being that they are not so thoroughly labelled as they might be for the convenience of visitors, many of whom are sufficiently interested to want to know at least the common names of the birds. All curators and superintendents of such institutions should recognize the importance of complete and systematic labelling of the specimens in their care.

The first aviary at which I stopped consisted of a collection of bright-hued and sweet-toned birds, most of them foreigners. Here one could revel in variety; for there were crimson-eared waxbills from West Africa, black-headed finches from India, cut-throat finches and other dainty folk from across the sea, with indigo-birds, nonpareils, goldfinches, and song-sparrows from our own land. Of these, the nonpareils, or painted finches, were the most gifted singers, having loud, clear voices that rang far above the voices of their fellow-prisoners. No birds make daintier pets than these pretty creatures, with their delicate blue and red costumes. The next best singer in this collection was the American goldfinch, which was not far behind the nonpareil, and really excelled him in one respect,—that is, his song was more prolonged and varied.

The next collection was certainly a parti-hued one, containing cardinal grossbeaks, Brazilian cardinals, crow blackbirds, towhee buntings, brown thrashers, and English blackbirds, I had the pleasure of hearing the song of the Brazilian cardinal. It was quite fine, but scarcely comparable with the rich, full-toned, and varied whistle of our cardinal-bird, being much less vigorous, slower in movement, and feebler in tone. It was gratifying to be able to give the palm to our North American songster.

But of all the clatter of bird music and bird noise combined that I have ever heard in my life, the song of the English starling bore off the bays. Never before had I listened to such divers sounds from a bird’s throat, nor had I even fancied that they were possible. Small wonder a well-trained starling costs from twenty to forty dollars at the bird stores! No description can do justice to the starling’s song. He begins in a low, subdued tone, and seems at first to be quite calm; but gradually he grows excited, his body quivers and sways from side to side, his neck is craned out, his throat expands and contracts convulsively, and, oh! oh! oh!—pardon the exclamations—the hurly-burly that gurgles and ripples and bubbles and pours from his windpipe! At one point a double sound is produced, or two sounds nearly at the same moment,—one low and guttural, the other on a higher key,—presently a half-dozen notes rush forth pell-mell, accompanied by a quick snapping of the mandibles; then a succession of loud, musical, explosive notes fall on the ear; and finally the bird, as if in a spasm of ecstasy, opens his mouth wide and utters a clear, rapturous trill as a sort of musical peroration. It is simply wonderful. At first the bird seems to control the song, but erelong the song seems to master the bird completely. To my mind, it seemed that the songster in the intervals of silence had wound up his music-box, and then, having got started, was unable to stop until the spring had run down. Some of the notes of the strain were quite melodious, while others were rather grating.

But what was that silvery song, rising above all the other clangor of music? It was the trill of my peerless little friend, the white-throated sparrow, which I have met so often in my own woodland trysts. Were I to award the prize to any bird in the whole Zoo for sweetness of tone, it would certainly be given to this matchless minstrel. No other bird’s voice had such a purely musical quality; and he sang just as loudly and sweetly as he does in his native copse, bringing back the memory of many a pleasant woodland ramble.

A beautiful family group next claimed attention. It comprised two adult silver pheasants, a male and female, and two little chicks recently from the shell, which had been hatched in the Zoo. They looked like downy chickens, and were about as large. There was no hint of the long, gorgeous plumes that their papa bore so proudly; nothing but brownish, slightly checkered down made up their suits. When their mamma pecked at something on the ground, they would scamper to her for it, as you have seen small chickens do. Unlike most young birds, they picked up their food themselves, and did not pry open their mouths to be fed.

Had you seen the birds I next stopped to ogle, you would have joined in my merriment; for they were the great kingfishers of Australia. What heavy bills they carried, looking like good-sized clubs! One of them pounded his beak against his perch until it fairly rattled with the concussion. When I tapped lightly against the wires, they stretched out their necks, and hissed at me out of their huge mouths.

Nothing was more pleasing than a large wired house containing a dozen or more blue jays. Rain was falling gently at the time, and the refreshing drops filtered upon the birds through the wire roof. How they enjoyed their bath as they flitted from perch to perch! But the rain did not descend rapidly enough for several of them; and so, in order to drench their plumage more thoroughly, they plunged into the leafy bushes growing in their apartment, and crept about over and through the sprinkled foliage until their feathers were well rinsed.

An interesting bird was the yellow-headed blackbird, which is a resident of some of our Western States, but which does not deign even to visit my neighborhood. His whole head and neck are brilliant yellow, as if he had plunged up to his shoulders in a keg of yellow paint, while the rest of his attire is shiny black. He utters a loud, shrill whistle, quite unlike any sound produced by his kinsmen, the crow blackbird and the red-wing. He seemed to feel quite at home in his cage with several other species of birds.

Many a time I have thought I heard a tumult of bird song in the fields or woods, but at the Zoo I was greeted with a perfect din from the throats of more than two dozen indigo-birds, all singing simultaneously. They simply drowned out every other sound in the neighborhood when they chimed in the chorus. Even the goldfinch, doing his level best, could not be heard until there was a lull in the shriller music. In the same enclosure were the bluebirds and robins. My pity went out to one of the robins, which was trying to build a nest, but could not find a proper site nor the right kind of material. She would pick up a bunch of fibres and strings from the ground, fling them on the window-sill, and then squat down upon them to press them into the desired concave with her red bosom; but it was all to no purpose, for she had no mortar with which to rear the walls of a cottage.

Leaving the robin to her fruitless labors, I turned to a collection of weaver-birds of various species and divers markings. There was one, especially, with a black head and neck and yellow body, that attracted notice. He was rather handsome; his song, however, was a perfect squall, especially the closing notes. These birds did not sing all the time, but intermittently, one of them beginning with a few ringing notes as a prelude, and then the others joining, all screaming louder and louder as the chorus went on, until they ended in a supreme racket. Then there were a few moments of quiet, followed by the united chorus as before, making such a tumult that one voice could scarcely be distinguished from another. A dainty little sparrow, unnamed, seemed to fill in the intervals with his chirpings, forming a sort of semi-musical interlude.

The enclosure which contained the yellow-headed blackbird was divided into a number of apartments. Here were parrots of various species, among them a number of white-throated Amazons. You have doubtless heard a dozen or more parrots screaming simultaneously. On my visit these birds created a terrible hubbub. They cried and laughed and sighed and groaned and shrieked until my ears were almost deafened. But in the midst of it all, when there was a slight lull, could be heard the silvery trill of a white-throated sparrow, sounding like the music of an angel amid a tumult of imps.

Near the centre of the garden there is a long pond enclosed by wire fencing, and on and about this pond is to be found an interesting group of water-fowls. There was a large bluish-colored crane with a ruff of feathers about his head. A workman came along and snapped his fingers at the bird, which hopped and leaped about and almost turned a somersault. A great blue heron had made a nest of sticks and twigs on the bare bank of the pond, and was sitting on two eggs. While I was watching her, she rose slowly on her long stilts, stretched out her stiffened wings, rearranged the sticks with her bill, and then sat down on her eggs again, turning them under her breast. What an opportunity for a bird student if day by day he could have watched her build her nest and rear her young!

Swimming about on the pond like a couple of feathered craft were two great white pelicans with long bills and elevated wings. A tuft of feathers or bristles grew on the top of their upper mandibles. They seemed to be guying each other, or probably were engaged in a real naval battle; for they pursued each other around and around, engaged in various martial movements and counter-movements, and every now and then clashed together their great beaks like two men fencing with swords. But they avoided close contact. How lightly and smoothly they glided about on the water!

Standing on a platform on the other side of the pond, were two more large, almost gigantic pelicans, not of the same species as the two just mentioned, having no tufts on their beaks, but a large featherless spot on the side of their heads encircling the eye. There they stood, silently preening their plumes, dexterously drawing each snowy feather between their mandibles. How long they had been making their toilet I cannot say. Presently the first two pelicans came sailing over to the platform, and climbed awkwardly upon it. Would there be a pitched battle between them and the other two birds? One of the latter stretched forth his neck, and, to my great surprise, puffed out a large membranous bag or pouch at his throat like that of a frog, and uttered a warning cry. But soon the quartette of feathered Goliaths settled down into quiet, and adjusted their plumes without the least interference with one another’s comfort.

Following a winding pathway, I presently reached an apartment which contained sixteen great horned owls, sitting in a row and looking as wise as Greek sages. It was amusing to see them expand their eyes and stare through the blinding light, then blink, close one eye and dilate the other, and then shut both so nearly that only narrow chinks were visible between the lids. Several of them opened their small, human-like mouths, and hissed at me softly whenever I stirred. In another part of the ground there was a collection of barn owls, with faces that looked very intelligent; but the birds seemed to be quite wild, glaring with their black eyes and swaying their heads from side to side in a nervous, irritable way.

I felt many times repaid for my saunter through the Zoo, and would advise all who have an opportunity of visiting a good zoölogical garden not to let it go by unimproved. A great deal of information as well as pleasure may be thus gained.

Wherever one is, one must get people to talking about one’s mania. How else could it be said that there is method in one’s madness, or in what respects it differs from mere lunacy? While visiting with a delightful family living in a city some distance from my home, our conversation drifted—perhaps with a good deal of calculation on my part—to the birds, with the result that I was put in possession of several facts worth noting, chiefly because they prove how helpful some birds are to one another in their domestic relations. No birds are more ingenious in planning for one another’s comfort and safety than our “foreign brethren,” the English sparrows. The mistress of this intelligent family, a woman who has keen eyes and ears for the birds, declared that she always heard one sparrow in the trees about the house waking up its sleeping mates at break of day, like the father of a family rousing his drowsing children. It called in shrill tones as if it were saying, “Wake up! wake up! Day is coming! Time to go to work!” As it continued its clamor, it seemed to be flying about from one point to another, visiting every bedroom, until at length a faint peep was heard here and there in response from various members of the sparrow household, and erelong the entire company was awake. When my friend told me this story, I was considerably surprised, not to say a little skeptical. But, remaining in their home over night, I had an opportunity to confirm the story, for I was myself awakened in the morning by the loud, impatient calls of a sparrow rousing his family; and the process took place just as my informants had described it, leaving no longer any room for doubt.

The same kind friends described another cunning freak of bird behavior. A lady’s bedroom window opened near some bushy trees, in which a pair of birds—perhaps robins—had built a nest. At night the lady would often hear the male singing. But sometimes he would grow drowsy, and would become silent,—he had evidently got to napping,—when there would be a coaxing, complaining _Pe-e-e-p! pe-e-e-p!_ from the little wife on the nest, evidently asking him to “sing some more.” Then he would tune his pipe again until his throat got tired and his eyelids heavy. In this way the exacting wife kept her spouse serenading her for a large part of the night. Perhaps, like children, she could not sleep unless some one was singing to her. At all events, it was very bright of her to demand a lullaby or love-song from her husband to put her to sleep.

The conduct of many kinds of birds in the autumn while preparing for their Hegira to the south is extremely interesting. They assemble in flocks, sometimes large enough to suggest an ecumenical council, and fall to cackling, twittering, discussing, and in many other ways making preparation for their aerial voyage to another clime. They really seem to regret being compelled to leave their pleasant summer haunts, if one may judge from the length and fervor of their goodbyes. Perhaps they are like human beings who have a strong attachment for home, and must visit every nook and tryst to say _au revoir_ before they take their departure. One can easily imagine how dear to their hearts are the scenes of their childhood, and of their nest-building and brood-rearing.

No birds make a greater to-do over their leave-taking in the autumn than the house martins, I once visited for a few days with some friends who live in the country and have had a bevy of martins in their boxes for many years. They described the behavior of these birds when fall comes. At a certain date in September they will gather in a compact flock, sing and whistle and chatter at the top of their voices, circle about the premises, alighting on the trees, fences, and buildings, and then will rise in the air and sail away through the blue ether. Strange to say, they may return in a day or two, and repeat their evolutions; and this may be done several times before they say adieu and begin their southward pilgrimage in real earnest. Why do they do this? One might well rack one’s brain in vain conjectures. Do they lose their way the first time? Or do they get a bad start, and then come back to try again? Or do they get homesick after they have gone some distance, and return once more to look upon the familiar scenes? It would be difficult to sift all the processes of bird cerebration.

XVIII.
A BIRD ANTHOLOGY FROM LOWELL.[9]

In making a study of Lowell’s poetry for a special purpose, one cannot help admiring the genius with which he transmutes every theme he touches into gold. His Muse is exceedingly versatile, ranging at her own sweet will over a wide and varied field. There may be times when you are not in the mood for smiling at his humor or weeping at his pathos; but his delineations of Nature are always so true, so musical, so picturesque, that they seldom fail to strike a responsive chord in the breasts of those readers who are not.

“Aliens among the birds and brooks,
Dull to interpret or conceive
What gospels lost the woods retrieve.”

No other American poet seems to get quite so near to Nature’s throbbing heart. Dream though he sometimes may, he seldom loses his hold on the world of reality. Nature in her own garb is beautiful enough for him, and does not need the garnishing and drapery of an over-fanciful interpretation. It is not my purpose, however, to eulogize Lowell’s poetry, even his poetry of Nature, in a general way, or attempt an analysis of it, but simply to call attention to his metrical descriptions of the feathered creation. Among all our American poets, he is the limner _par excellence_ of bird ways. It is true that Emerson is somewhat rich in allusions to our feathered denizens, and especially felicitous in his characterizations; but his references are briefer, more casual, and far less frequent than those of Lowell, who takes toll of them, one might almost say, without stint; for he says of himself,—

“My heart, I cannot still it,
Nest that has song-birds in it.”

Lowell never speaks of the birds in a stereotyped way, as many poets do, but mentions them by name, and often describes their behavior with a deftness and accuracy of touch that fairly enchant the specialist in bird lore. Having given no little attention to the study of birds, I feel prepared to say that Lowell’s hand is almost always sure when he undertakes to depict the manners of the “feathered republic of the groves.” I have found, I think, only one technical inaccuracy in all his numerous allusions;[10] and I believe I may say, without boasting, that I am familiar with every bird whose charms he has chanted. Indeed, he himself boasts modestly, as poets may, of his familiarity with the birds in his beautiful tribute to George William Curtis, saying,—

“I learned all weather-signs of day and night;
No bird but I could name him by his flight.”

In the first place, let me point out the remarkable felicity of his more general references to birds and their ways. The music of the minstrels of the air often fills his bosom with pleasing but half-regretful reminders of other and happier days, as, for example, when he penned those exquisite lines, “To Perdita, Singing,”—

“She sits and sings,
With folded wings
And white arms crost,
‘Weep not for bygone things,
They are not lost.’”

Then follow some lines of rare sweetness, the concluding ones of which are these,—

“Every look and every word
Which thou givest forth to-day,
Tells of the singing of the bird
Whose music stilled thy boyish play.”

A similar pensive reference is found in our poet’s ode, “To the Dandelion,” which is as deserving of admiration as many of the more famous odes of English poesy. He thus apostrophizes “the common flower” that fringes “the dusty road with harmless gold,”—

“My childhood’s earliest thoughts are linked with thee;
The sight of thee calls back the robin’s song,
Who, from the dark old tree
Beside the door, sang clearly all day long;
And I, secure in childish piety,
Listened as if I heard an angel sing
With news from heaven, which he could bring
Fresh every day to my untainted ears,
When birds and flowers and I were happy peers.”

A bird often affords our poet a metaphor or a simile by which to represent some sad reminiscence of his life. Listen to this sweet minor strain,—

“As a twig trembles, which a bird
Lights on to sing, then leaves unbent,
So is my memory thrilled and stirred;—
I only know she came and went.”

With what a plaintive melody the last line lingers in one’s mind, like some far-off melancholy strain, singing itself over again and again with a persistency that will not be hushed,—“I only know she came and went.” There are times, too, when our bard falls into a slightly despondent mood, and even then the birds serve to give a turn to his pensive reflections,—

“But each day brings less summer cheer,
Crimps more our ineffectual spring,
And something earlier every year
Our singing birds take wing.”

To my mind, he is less attractive when his verse takes on this cheerless hue, and I therefore turn gladly to his more jubilant lays, in which he seems to have caught the joy of the full-toned bird orchestra, as he does at more than one place in “The Vision of Sir Launfal,”—

“The little birds sang as if it were
The one day of summer in all the year,
And the very leaves seemed to sing on the trees.”

What bird lover has not often been caught in such a mesh of bird song, on a bright day of the early springtime? Even good-natured Hosea Biglow cannot always repress his enthusiasm for the birds, although he is quite too chary of his allusions to them,—that is, too chary for the man who has birds on the brain. His unsophisticated sincerity cannot brook a perfunctory treatment of Nature’s blithe minstrels, for he breaks out scornfully in denouncing those book-read poets who get “wut they’ve airly read” so “worked into their heart an’ head” that they

“... can’t seem to write but jest on sheers
With furrin countries or played-out ideers.
· · · · · · ·
This makes ’em talk o’ daisies, larks, an’ things,
Ez though we’d nothin’ here that blows an’ sings.
Why, I’d give more for one live bobolink
Than a square mile o’ larks in printer’s ink!”

Hosea, in spite of the meagreness of his allusions to bird life, still proves beyond a doubt that he is conversant with the migratory habits of the birds, and that he has been watching a little impatiently for their vernal appearance in his native fields and woods, as every bird student who reads the following lines will testify,—

“The birds are here, for all the season’s late;
They take the sun’s height, an’ don’ never wait;
Soon’z he officially declares it’s spring,
Their light hearts lift ’em on a north’ard wing,
An’ th’ ain’t an acre, fur ez you can hear,
Can’t by the music tell the time o’ year.”

Sometimes a single line or phrase proclaims our poet’s loving familiarity with the feathered world, and gives his verse an outdoor flavor that positively puts a tonic into the appreciative reader’s veins, almost driving him out beneath the shining vault of the sky; as when the poet refers to “the cock’s shrill trump that tells of scattered corn;” or to “the thin-winged swallow skating on the air;” or laments because “snowflakes fledge the summer’s nest;” or remarks incidentally that the “cat-bird croons in the lilac-bush;” or that “the robin sings, as of old, from the limb;” or that “the single crow a single caw lets fall;” or asks, “Is a thrush gurgling from the brake?” How vivid and full of woodsy suggestion are the following lines from that captivating poem, “Al Fresco”:—

“The only hammer that I hear
Is wielded by the woodpecker,
The single noisy calling his
In all our leaf-hid Sybaris.”

Nothing could be more characteristic of woodpeckerdom than that quatrain. Still more rhythmical are the first six lines—a metrical sextette that sing themselves—of the poem entitled “The Fountain of Youth,”—

“’Tis a woodland enchanted!
By no sadder spirit
Than blackbirds and thrushes,
That whistle to cheer it
All day in the bushes,
This woodland is haunted.”

And what a picture for the fancy is limned in the following lines:—

“Like rainbow-feathered birds that bloom
A moment on some autumn bough,
That, with the spurn of their farewell,
Sheds its last leaves!”

A flashlight view that, of one of the rarest scenes in Nature. The poet must have bent over more than one callow brood of nestlings, or he never could have written so knowingly about them,—

“Blind nestlings, unafraid,
Stretch up wide-mouthed to every shade
By which their downy dream is stirred,
Taking it for the mother bird;”

for such is the unsuspicious habit of most bantlings in the nest. It would be difficult to find a defter touch than that with which Lowell describes a resplendent morning, “omnipotent with sunshine,” whose “quick charm ... wiled the bluebird to his whiff of song,”

“While aloof
An oriole clattered and a robin shrilled,
Denouncing me an alien and a thief;”

particularly if it is borne in mind that the allusion is to the chattering alarm-call of the oriole and the robin. Exquisite indeed is the description of—

“The bluebird shifting his light load of song
From post to post along the cheerless fence;

while it would puzzle one to find anywhere a more poetical and at the same time realistic portrayal than this,—

“Far distant sounds the hidden chickadee
Close at my side,”—

especially if the reference be to the little black-capped titmouse’s minor whistle, which has a strange, sad remoteness when heard in the sylvan depth, reminding one of the myth of Orpheus mourning for his lost love. No less vivid are the lines,—

“The phœbe scarce whistles
Once an hour to his fellow;”

or these,—

“O’erhead the balanced hen-hawk slides,
Twinned in the river’s heaven below;”

or this description of a winter scene,—

“I stood and watched by the window
The noiseless work of the sky,
And the sudden flurries of snow-birds
Like brown leaves whirling by.”

Hark!—

“All pleasant winds from south and west
With lullabies thine ears beguiled,
Rocking thee in thine oriole’s nest,
Till Nature looked at thee and smiled.”

Listen again!—

“The sobered robin, hunger-silent now,
Seeks cedar-berries blue, his autumn cheer.”

If one were only there to see:—

“High flaps in sparkling blue the far-heard crow,
The silvered flats gleam frostily below;
Suddenly drops the gull, and breaks the glassy tide.”

Of course even the casual observer has often been aware of the fact that “the robin is plastering his house hard by;” and many of us may have looked upon a winter scene like the following, but I am sure we never thought of painting it in just such tropical colors,—

“The river was numb, and could not speak,
For the weaver Winter its shroud had spun;
A single crow on the tree-top bleak
From his shining feathers shed off the cold sun.”

Hosea Biglow seems to think he knows where to find

“Some blooms thet make the season suit the mind,
An’ seem to match the doubting bluebird’s notes,”

liverworts and bloodroots being among those talismanic plants. There is a world of serenity in the following metrical etching, which makes one almost long to die and be forever at rest:—

“Happy their end
Who vanish down life’s evening stream
Placid as swans that drift in dream
Round the next river-bend.”

Our poet had the charming habit of making some characteristic bird-way do deft metaphorical duty in his verse, like the skilful weaver who runs a line of exquisite tint through his weft. Here is an instance, found in the poem called “Threnodia,”—

“I loved to see the infant soul
· · · · · · ·
Peep timidly from out its nest,
His lips, the while,
Fluttering with half-fledged words,
Or hushing to a smile
That more than words expressed,
When his glad mother on him stole
And snatched him to her breast!
O, thoughts were brooding in those eyes,
That would have soared like strong-winged birds
Far, far into the skies,
Gladding the earth with song
And gushing harmonies.”

Here is another fine simile,—

“As if a lark should suddenly drop dead
While the blue air yet trembled with its song,
So snapped at once that music’s golden thread.”

In the following stanzas on “The Falcon”—used as a metaphor for Truth—there is a captivating multiplicity of figures,—

“I know a falcon swift and peerless
As e’er was cradled in the pine;
No bird had ever eye so fearless,
Or wing so strong as this of mine.

“The winds not better love to pilot
A cloud with molten gold o’errun,
Than him, a little burning islet,
A star above the coming sun.

“For with a lark’s heart he doth tower,
By a glorious upward instinct drawn;
No bee nestles deeper in the flower
Than he in the bursting rose of dawn.”

It almost throws one into “a midsummer night’s dream” to read this picturesque line,—

“The clouds like swans drift down the streaming atmosphere.”

That must have been an expressive face indeed whose features were

“As full of motion as a nest
That palpitates with unfledged birds,”

albeit one may be permitted to hope, without irreverence, that it made a more attractive picture than did the callow youngsters gaping and wabbling in their nursery. But here is a delineation of bird life so graphically and richly colored that one longs for the brush of the artist to transfer it to canvas. Listen! listen! There is an exhilarant in the atmosphere.

“The little bird sits at his door in the sun,
Atilt like a blossom among the leaves,
And lets his illumined being o’errun
With the deluge of summer it receives;
His mate feels the eggs beneath her wings,
And the heart in her dumb breast flutters and sings;
He sings to the wide world, and she to her nest,—
In the nice ear of Nature which song is the best?”

The last two lines, by the way, are in perfect keeping with Mr. Lowell’s generous instincts, which were always on the side of the lowly and unappreciated. Seductive as the figure is, there seems to be something slightly forced in the poet’s conceit that the thrushes sing because they have been “pierced through with June’s delicious sting,” unless it might be justified on the principle that pain and trial often enhance moral values.

There is a beautiful stanza in the poem, “On Planting a Tree at Inverara,”—

“Hither the busy birds shall flutter,
With the light timber for their nests,
And, pausing from their labor, utter
The morning sunshine in their breasts.”

With all his poet’s soul Lowell loved the serene, as when he congratulates himself on having left the grating noise and stifling smoke of London, and found in some sequestered haunt

“Air and quiet too;
Air filtered through the beech and oak;
Quiet by nothing harsher broke
Than wood-dove’s meditative coo.”

The word “meditative” is extremely felicitous, but no more so than the hop-skip-and-spring of the following lines from a Commencement dinner poem:—

“I’ve a notion, I think, of a good dinner speech,
Tripping light as a sandpiper over the beach,
Swerving this way and that, as the wave of the moment
Washes out its slight trace with a dash of whim’s foam on’t,
And leaving on memory’s rim just a sense
Something graceful had gone by, a live present tense;
Not poetry,—no, not quite that, but as good,
A kind of winged prose that could fly if it would.”

Like all discriminating lovers of “Nature’s blithe commoners,” Lowell had his favorites, whose praises he frequently rung with a sincerity that cannot be doubted for a moment. He was especially partial to the bobolink. He must have often peeped into the

“Tussocks that house blithe Bob o’ Lincoln,”

or his Muse would not have been so adept and faithful in her hymning descriptions. We will lend a listening ear while she sings her chansons on the virtues of the bird our poet loved so truly. First, I will call attention to the following portraiture of that cavalier of the meadow, the male bobolink, at the season when there are bantlings in the grass-domed nest which demand his paternal care, as well as that of his faithful spouse,—

“Meanwhile that devil-may-care, the bobolink,
Remembering duty, in mid-quaver stops
Just ere he sweeps o’er rapture’s tremulous brink,
And ’twixt the windrows most demurely drops,
A decorous bird of business, who provides
For his brown mate and fledgelings six besides,
And looks from right to left, a farmer ’mid his crops.”

One can almost see the poet leaning against the rail fence of the clover field, with pencil in hand, drawing the portrait of the bird which is posing unconsciously before him, so true is his delineation of bobolink life. But to find Lowell at his best you must read his description of Robert o’ Lincoln at _his_ best. Hark!—

“A week ago the sparrow was divine;
The bluebird, shifting his light load of song
From post to post along the cheerless fence,
Was as a rhymer ere the poet come;
But now, oh, rapture! sunshine winged and voiced,
Pipe blown through by the warm, wild breath of the West,
Shepherding his soft droves of fleecy cloud,
Gladness of woods, skies, waters, all in one,
The bobolink has come, and, like the soul
Of the sweet season, vocal in a bird,
Gurgles in ecstasy we know not what,
Save _June! Dear June! Now God be praised for June._”

The only fault to be found with this exquisite tribute is that it is rather too much involved to glide melodiously from the lips, or be quite clear to the mind until after a second or third reading. Not so picturesque, but more simple and musical, is this bit,—

“From blossom-clouded orchards, far away
The bobolink tinkled.”

The provincial tongue of Hosea Biglow presents us with the following rare bit of portraiture, which has all the strength and freshness of a painting from Nature:—

“June’s bridesman, poet o’ the year,
Gladness on wings, the bobolink is here;
Half-hid in tip-top apple-bloom he sings,
Or climbs against the breeze with quiverin’ wings,
Or, givin’ way to’t in mock despair,
Runs down, a brook o’ laughter, thro’ the air,”—

a rhythmical tribute that is both an honor to the poet and a compliment to the bobolink.

The Baltimore oriole also claims Mr. Lowell’s admiration. There is one descriptive passage relative to this bird that, in my opinion, goes ahead of even the famous bobolink eulogy just quoted:

“Hush! ’Tis he!
My oriole, my glance of summer fire,
Is come at last, and, ever on the watch,
Twitches the pack-thread I had lightly wound
About the bough to help his housekeeping,—
Twitches and scouts by turns, blessing his luck,
Yet fearing me who laid it in his way,
Nor, more than wiser we in our affairs,
Divines the providence that hides and helps.
_Heave, ho! Heave, ho!_ he whistles as the twine
Slackens its hold; _once more, now!_ and a flash
Lightens across the sunlight to the elm
Where his mate dangles at her cup of felt
Nor all his booty is the thread; he trails
My loosened thought with it along the air,
And I must follow, would I ever find
The inward rhyme to all this wealth of life.”

The last sentence is a deft turn at weaving, oriole-like, a thread of moral reflection into a fine piece of description. Even in his later years Lowell could not throw off the spell that this summer flake of gold had thrown over him; for in his volume called “Heartsease and Rue” he has inserted a little poem entitled “The Nest” that for rhythmical flow and beauty has not been excelled by any of his earlier productions. He first describes the nest in May as follows:—

“Then from the honeysuckle gray
The oriole with experienced quest
Twitches the fibrous bark away,
The cordage of his hammock nest,
Cheering his labor with a note
Rich as the orange of his throat.

“High o’er the loud and dusty road
The soft gray cup in safety swings,
To brim ere August with its load
Of downy breasts and throbbing wings,
O’er which the friendly elm-tree heaves
An emerald roof with sculptured leaves.
· · · · · · ·
Thy duty, wingëd flame of Spring,
Is but to love and fly and sing.”

Then he chants a pathetic “palinode,” as he calls it, in December, when

“... homeless winds complain along
The columned choir once thrilled with song.

“And thou, dear nest, whence joy and praise
The thankful oriole used to pour,
Swing’st empty while the north winds chase
Their snowy swarms from Labrador.
But, loyal to the happy past,
I love thee still for what thou wast.”

Besides the bobolink and the oriole, the blackbird is often made to do charming duty in Lowell’s verse. Every student of the birds has often seen the picture described by the line,—

“Alders the creaking red-wings sink on;”

or heard

“... the blackbirds clatt’rin’ in tall trees
An’ settlin’ things in windy Congresses,—
Queer politicians, though, for I’ll be skinned
Ef all on ’em don’t head against the wind.”

A number of quotations in which the robin figures conspicuously have already been given. One more occurs to me,—that in which Hosea Biglow exclaims,—

“Thet’s robin-redbreast’s almanick; he knows
That arter this ther’ ’s only blossom-snows;
So, choosin’ out a handy crotch an’ spouse,
He goes to plast’rin’ his adobë house.”

But hold! here is still another:—

“The Maple puts her corals on in May,
While loitering frosts about the lowlands cling,
To be in tune with what the robins sing,
Plastering new log-huts ’mid her branches gray.”

It can scarcely be hoped to make this anthology from Lowell exhaustive, for almost every time I turn the leaves of his poetical works I stumble upon some reference to the birds before unnoted; but this article would be incomplete should one of his choicest bits of metrical description, which must bring both anthology and book to a close, be omitted. It is found in the poem entitled “The Nightingale in the Study,” the whole of which must be read to catch the drift of its moral teaching. The poet doubtless attributes more magnanimity to the cat-bird than that carolist is entitled to,—but no matter; the Muses cannot be over-precise. Here is a charmer:—

“‘Come forth!’ my cat-bird calls to me,
‘And hear me sing a cavatina
That, in this old familiar tree,
Shall hang a garden of Alcina.

· · · · · · ·

“‘Or, if to me you will not hark,
By Beaver Brook a thrush is ringing
Till all the alder-coverts dark
Seem sunshine-dappled with his singing.

“‘Come out beneath the unmastered sky,
With its emancipating spaces,
And learn to sing as well as I,
Without premeditated graces.

· · · · · · ·

“‘Come out! with me the oriole cries,
Escape the demon that pursues you!
And hark! the cuckoo weatherwise,
Still hiding, farther onward wooes you.’”

But this time, for a wonder, the poet declines the invitation to go out of doors, because, as he says, “a bird is singing in my brain;” and yet he does so with evident regret, for he exclaims, in response to the cat-bird’s plea,—

“‘Alas, dear friend, that, all my days,
Has poured from that syringa thicket
The quaintly discontinuous lays
To which I hold a season ticket,—

“‘A season ticket cheaply bought
With a dessert of pilfered berries,
And who so oft my love has caught
With morn and evening voluntaries,

“‘Deem me not faithless, if all day
Among my dusty books I linger,
No pipe, like thee, for June to play
With fancy-led, half-conscious finger.

“‘A bird is singing in my brain,
And bubbling o’er with mingled fancies,
Gay, tragic, rapt, right heart of Spain
Fed with the sap of old romances;’”

and so for once the poet of the birds cannot be lured from his study, where he has been caught in the weft of old Moorish and Castilian legends, and he concludes his apology with the only slighting allusion in all his verses, so far as I have discovered, to his beloved winged minstrels:—