Part 15

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:—