Part 22

“‘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.

APPENDIX. MY BIRD LIST.

The following is an alphabetical list of the birds which I have seen in my neighborhood, Springfield, Clark County, Ohio. It is given for the convenience of bird students, who are always interested in the locale of the feathered tribe. The small figure (1) indicates residents all the year round; (2), summer residents; (3), winter residents; (4), migrants.

Bittern, American.² Blackbird, red-winged.² Bluebird.² (occasionally winter resident). Bobolink.² Bob-white.¹ Bunting, black-throated; Dickcissel.² Butcher-bird.⁴ Buzzard, turkey.²

Cat-bird.² Cedar-bird.⁴ Chat, yellow-breasted.² Chickadee, black-capped.¹ Cow-bird.² Creeper, brown.³ Crow.¹ Cuckoo, black-billed.² yellow-billed.²

Dickcissel.² Dove, turtle or mourning.¹ Duck, wood.²

Finch, purple.⁴ Flicker.¹ Flycatcher, Acadian.⁴ crested.² least.⁴ Traill’s.⁴ yellow-bellied.⁴

Gnatcatcher, blue-gray.⁴ Goldfinch, American.¹ Grass-finch.² Grossbeak, cardinal.¹ rose-breasted.⁴ Grouse, ruffed.¹

Hawk, red-shouldered.³ sharp-shinned.³ sparrow.¹ Heron, great blue.² green.² Humming-bird, ruby-throated.²

Indigo-bird.²

Jay, blue.² Junco; snowbird.³

Killdeer.² Kingbird.² Kingfisher, belted.² Kinglet, golden-crowned.³ ruby-crowned.⁴

Lark, horned or shore.³ meadow.²

Martin, purple.² Night-hawk.²

Nuthatch, white-breasted.¹ red-breasted.⁴

Oriole, Baltimore.² orchard.² Oven bird.² Owl, screech.¹

Pewee, wood.² Phœbe; house pewee.² Pipit, American.³

Redstart.⁴ Robin.² (sometimes in winter).

Sandpiper, spotted.² Sapsucker, yellow-bellied.⁴ Shrike, loggerhead.⁴ Sparrow, chipping.² English.¹ field.² fox.⁴ grasshopper.² lark.⁴ Savanna.⁴ song.¹ swamp.⁴ tree.³ white-crowned.⁴ white-throated.⁴ Swallow, bank.² barn.² cliff or cave. white-bellied or tree.² Swift, chimney.²