Birds and Poets : with Other Papers Part 3

"The schoolboy, wandering through the wood To pull the primrose gay, Starts, the new voice of spring to hear, And imitates thy lay.

"Sweet bird! thy bower is ever green, Thy sky is ever clear; Thou hast no sorrow in thy song, No winter in thy year."

The European cuckoo is evidently a much gayer bird than ours, and much more noticeable.

"Hark, how the jolly cuckoos sing 'Cuckoo!' to welcome in the spring,"

says John Lyly three hundred years agone. Its note is easily imitated, and boys will render it so perfectly as to deceive any but the shrewdest ear. An English lady tells me its voice reminds one of children at play, and is full of gayety and happiness. It is a persistent songster, and keeps up its call from morning to night. Indeed, certain parts of Wordsworth's poem--those that refer to the bird as a mystery, a wandering, solitary voice--seem to fit our bird better than the European species. Our cuckoo is in fact a solitary wanderer, repeating its loud, guttural call in the depths of the forest, and well calculated to arrest the attention of a poet like Wordsworth, who was himself a kind of cuckoo, a solitary voice, syllabling the loneliness that broods over streams and woods,--

"And once far off, and near."

Our cuckoo is not a spring bird, being seldom seen or heard in the North before late in May. He is a great devourer of canker-worms, and, when these pests appear, he comes out of his forest seclusion and makes excursions through the orchards stealthily and quietly, regaling himself upon those pulpy, fuzzy t.i.tbits. His coat of deep cinnamon brown has a silky gloss and is very beautiful. His note or call is not musical but loud, and has in a remarkable degree the quality of remoteness and introvertedness. It is like a vocal legend, and to the farmer bodes rain.

It is worthy of note, and ill.u.s.trates some things said farther back, that birds not strictly denominated songsters, but criers like the cuckoo, have been quite as great favorites with the poets, and have received as affectionate treatment at their hands, as have the song-birds. One readily recalls Emerson's "t.i.tmouse," Trowbridge's "Pewee," Celia Thaxter's "Sandpiper," and others of a like character.

It is also worthy of note that the owl appears to be a greater favorite with the poets than the proud, soaring hawk. The owl is doubtless the more human and picturesque bird; then he belongs to the night and its weird effects. Bird of the silent wing and expansive eye, grimalkin in feathers, feline, mousing, haunting ruins" and towers, and mocking the midnight stillness with thy uncanny cry! The owl is the great bugaboo of the feathered tribes. His appearance by day is hailed by shouts of alarm and derision from nearly every bird that flies, from crows down to sparrows. They swarm about him like flies, and literally mob him back into his dusky retreat. Silence is as the breath of his nostrils to him, and the uproar that greets him when he emerges into the open day seems to alarm and confuse him as it does the pickpocket when everybody cries Thief.

But the poets, I say, have not despised him:--

"The lark is but a b.u.mpkin fowl; He sleeps in his nest till morn; But my blessing upon the jolly owl That all night blows his horn."

Both Shakespeare and Tennyson have made songs about him. This is Shakespeare's, from "Love's Labor's Lost," and perhaps has reference to the white or snowy owl:--

"When icicles hang by the wall, And d.i.c.k the shepherd blows his nail, And Tom bears logs into the hall, And milk comes frozen home in pail; When blood is nipped and ways be foul, Then nightly sings the staring owl, Tu-whoo!

Tu-whit! tu-whoo! a merry note, While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

"When all aloud the wind doth blow, And coughing drowns the parson's saw, And birds sit brooding in the snow, And Marian's nose looks red and raw; When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl, Then nightly sings the staring owl, Tu-whoo!

Tu-whit! Tu-whoo! a merry note, While greasy Joan doth keel the pot."

There is, perhaps, a slight reminiscence of this song in Tennyson's "Owl:"--

"When cats run home and light is come, And dew is cold upon the ground, And the far-off stream is dumb, And the whirring sail goes round, And the whirring sail goes round; Alone and warming his five wits, The white owl in the belfry sits.

"When merry milkmaids click the latch, And rarely smells the new-mown hay, And the c.o.c.k hath sung beneath the thatch Twice or thrice his roundelay, Twice or thrice his roundelay; Alone and warming his five wits, The white owl in the belfry sits."

Tennyson has not directly celebrated any of the more famous birds, but his poems contain frequent allusions to them. The

"Wild bird, whose warble, liquid sweet, Rings Eden through the budded quicks, Oh, tell me where the senses mix, Oh, tell me where the pa.s.sions meet,"

of "In Memoriam," is doubtless the nightingale. And here we have the lark:--

"Now sings the woodland loud and long, And distance takes a lovelier hue, And drowned in yonder living blue The lark becomes a sightless song."

And again in this from "A Dream of Fair Women:"--

"Then I heard A noise of some one coming through the lawn, And singing clearer than the crested bird That claps his wings at dawn."

The swallow is a favorite bird with Tennyson, and is frequently mentioned, beside being the princ.i.p.al figure in one of those charming love-songs in "The Princess." His allusions to the birds, as to any other natural feature, show him to be a careful observer, as when he speaks of

"The swamp, where hums the dropping snipe."

His single bird-poem, aside from the song I have quoted, is "The Blackbird," the Old World prototype of our robin, as if our bird had doffed the aristocratic black for a more democratic suit on reaching these sh.o.r.es. In curious contrast to the color of its plumage is its beak, which is as yellow as a kernel of Indian corn. The following are the two middle stanzas of the poem:--

"Yet, though I spared thee all the spring, Thy sole delight is, sitting still, With that gold dagger of thy bill To fret the summer jenneting.

"A golden bill! the silver tongue Cold February loved is dry; Plenty corrupts the melody That made thee famous once, when young."

Shakespeare, in one of his songs, alludes to the blackbird as the ouzel-c.o.c.k; indeed, he puts quite a flock of birds in this song:--

"The ouzel-c.o.c.k so black of hue, With orange tawny bill; The throstle with his note so true, The wren with little quill; The finch, the sparrow, and the lark, The plain song cuckoo gray, Whose note full many a man doth mark, And dares not answer nay."

So far as external appearances are concerned,--form, plumage, grace of manner,--no one ever had a less promising subject than had Trowbridge in the "Pewee." This bird, if not the plainest dressed, is the most unshapely in the woods. It is stiff and abrupt in its manners and sedentary in its habits, sitting around all day, in the dark recesses of the woods, on the dry twigs and branches, uttering now and then its plaintive cry, and "with many a flirt and flutter" snapping up its insect game.

The pewee belongs to quite a large family of birds, all of whom have strong family traits, and who are not the most peaceable and harmonious of the sylvan folk. They are pugnacious, harsh-voiced, angular in form and movement, with flexible tails and broad, flat, bristling beaks that stand to the face at the angle of a turn-up nose, and most of them wear a black cap pulled well down over their eyes. Their heads are large, neck and legs short, and elbows sharp. The wild Irishman of them all is the great crested flycatcher, a large, leather-colored or sandy-complexioned bird that prowls through the woods, uttering its harsh, uncanny note and waging fierce warfare upon its fellows. The exquisite of the family, and the braggart of the orchard, is the kingbird, a bully that loves to strip the feathers off its more timid neighbors such as the bluebird, that feeds on the stingless bees of the hive, the drones, and earns the reputation of great boldness by teasing large hawks, while it gives a wide berth to little ones.

The best beloved of them all is the phoebe-bird, one of the firstlings of the spring, of whom so many of our poets have made affectionate mention.

The wood pewee is the sweetest voiced, and, notwithstanding the ungracious things I have said of it and of its relations, merits to the full all Trowbridge's pleasant fancies. His poem is indeed a very careful study of the bird and its haunts, and is good poetry as well as good ornithology:--

"The listening Dryads hushed the woods; The boughs were thick, and thin and few The golden ribbons fluttering through; Their sun-embroidered, leafy hoods The lindens lifted to the blue; Only a little forest-brook The farthest hem of silence shook; When in the hollow shades I heard-- Was it a spirit or a bird?

Or, strayed from Eden, desolate, Some Peri calling to her mate, Whom nevermore her mate would cheer?

'Pe-ri! pe-ri! peer!'

"To trace it in its green retreat I sought among the boughs in vain; And followed still the wandering strain, So melancholy and so sweet, The dim-eyed violets yearned with pain.

'T was now a sorrow in the air, Some nymph's immortalized despair Haunting the woods and waterfalls; And now, at long, sad intervals, Sitting unseen in dusky shade, His plaintive pipe some fairy played, With long-drawn cadence thin and clear,-- 'Pe-wee! pe-wee! peer!'

"Long-drawn and clear its closes were-- As if the hand of Music through The sombre robe of Silence drew A thread of golden gossamer; So pure a flute the fairy blew.

Like beggared princes of the wood, In silver rags the birches stood; The hemlocks, lordly counselors, Were dumb; the st.u.r.dy servitors, In beechen jackets patched and gray, Seemed waiting spellbound all the day That low, entrancing note to hear,-- 'Pe-wee! pe-wee! peer!'

"I quit the search, and sat me down Beside the brook, irresolute, And watched a little bird in suit Of sober olive, soft and brown, Perched in the maple branches, mute; With greenish gold its vest was fringed, Its tiny cap was ebon-tinged, With ivory pale its wings were barred, And its dark eyes were tender-starred.

"Dear bird," I said, "what is thy name?"

And thrice the mournful answer came, So faint and far, and yet so near,-- 'Pe-wee! pe-wee! peer!'

"For so I found my forest bird,-- The pewee of the loneliest woods, Sole singer in these solitudes, Which never robin's whistle stirred, Where never bluebird's plume intrudes.

Quick darting through the dewy morn, The redstart trilled his twittering horn And vanished in thick boughs; at even, Like liquid pearls fresh showered from heaven, The high notes of the lone wood thrush Fell on the forest's holy hush; But thou all day complainest here,-- 'Pe-wee! pe-wee! peer!'"

Emerson's best natural history poem is the "Humble-Bee,"--a poem as good in its way as Burns's poem on the mouse; but his later poem, "The t.i.tmouse," has many of the same qualities, and cannot fail to be acceptable to both poet and naturalist.

The chickadee is indeed a truly Emersonian bird, and the poet shows him to be both a hero and a philosopher. Hardy, active, social, a winter bird no less than a summer, a defier of both frost and heat, lover of the pine-tree, and diligent searcher after truth in the shape of eggs and larvae of insects, preeminently a New England bird, clad in black and ashen gray, with a note the most cheering and rea.s.suring to be heard in our January woods,--I know of none other of our birds so well calculated to captivate the Emersonian muse.

Emerson himself is a northern hyperborean genius,--a winter bird with a clear, saucy, cheery call, and not a pa.s.sionate summer songster.

His lines have little melody to the ear, but they have the vigor and distinctness of all pure and compact things. They are like the needles of the pine--"the snow loving pine"--more than the emotional foliage of the deciduous trees, and the t.i.tmouse becomes them well:--