Part 19

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,”