  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 “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; “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 “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 phoebe 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 “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. 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:— “‘Bird of to-day, thy songs are stale To his, my singer of all weathers, My Calderon, my nightingale, My Arab soul in Spanish feathers. “‘Ah, friend, these singers dead so long, And still, God knows, in purgatory, Give its best sweetness to all song, To Nature’s self her better glory.’” Thus the Lowell anthology has swollen to a veritable anthem, and gives to this modest volume a peroration that it can never hope to deserve. |
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