Part 18

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.

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; 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.”