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diff --git a/5177.txt b/5177.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1b2625a --- /dev/null +++ b/5177.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6770 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Birds and Poets, by John Burroughs + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Birds and Poets + +Author: John Burroughs + +Posting Date: March 19, 2009 [EBook #5177] +Release Date: February, 2004 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BIRDS AND POETS *** + + + + +Produced by Jack Eden + + + + + + + + + +BIRDS AND POETS + +WITH OTHER PAPERS + +THE WRITINGS OF JOHN BURROUGHS, VOLUME III WITH PORTRAITS AND MANY +ILLUSTRATIONS + + +By John Burroughs + + + + +PREFACE + +I have deliberated a long time about coupling some of my sketches of +outdoor nature with a few chapters of a more purely literary character, +and thus confiding to my reader what absorbs and delights me inside my +four walls, as well as what pleases and engages me outside those walls; +especially since I have aimed to bring my outdoor spirit and method +within, and still to look upon my subject with the best naturalist's eye +I could command. + +I hope, therefore, he will not be scared away when I boldly confront +him in the latter portions of my book with this name of strange portent, +Walt Whitman, for I assure him that in this misjudged man he may press +the strongest poetic pulse that has yet beaten in America, or perhaps +in modern times. Then, these chapters are a proper supplement or +continuation of my themes and their analogy in literature, because +in them we shall "follow out these lessons of the earth and air," and +behold their application to higher matters. + +It is not an artificially graded path strewn with roses that invites us +in this part, but, let me hope, something better, a rugged trail through +the woods or along the beach where we shall now and then get a whiff of +natural air, or a glimpse of something to + + "Make the wild blood start + In its mystic springs." + +ESOPUS-ON-HUDSON, March, 1877. + + + +CONTENTS + + I. BIRDS AND POETS + II. TOUCHES OF NATURE + III. A BIRD MEDLEY + IV. APRIL + V. SPRING POEMS + VI. OUR RURAL DIVINITY + VII. BEFORE GENIUS +VIII. BEFORE BEAUTY IX. EMERSON + X. THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE + INDEX + + + + + +BIRDS AND POETS + + + + +I BIRDS AND POETS + + "In summer, when the shawes be shene, + And leaves be large and long, + It is full merry in fair forest + To hear the fowles' song. + The wood-wele sang, and wolde not cease, + Sitting upon the spray; + So loud, it wakened Robin Hood + In the greenwood where he lay." + +It might almost be said that the birds are all birds of the poets and +of no one else, because it is only the poetical temperament that +fully responds to them. So true is this, that all the great +ornithologists--original namers and biographers of the birds--have been +poets in deed if not in word. Audubon is a notable case in point, who, +if he had not the tongue or the pen of the poet, certainly had the +eye and ear and heart--"the fluid and attaching character"--and the +singleness of purpose, the enthusiasm, the unworldliness, the love, that +characterize the true and divine race of bards. + +So had Wilson, though perhaps not in as large a measure; yet he took +fire as only a poet can. While making a journey on foot to Philadelphia, +shortly after landing in this country, he caught sight of the red-headed +woodpecker flitting among the trees,--a bird that shows like a +tricolored scarf among the foliage,--and it so kindled his enthusiasm +that his life was devoted to the pursuit of the birds from that day. It +was a lucky hit. Wilson had already set up as a poet in Scotland, and +was still fermenting when the bird met his eye and suggested to his soul +a new outlet for its enthusiasm. + +The very idea of a bird is a symbol and a suggestion to the poet. A +bird seems to be at the top of the scale, so vehement and intense is +his life,--large-brained, large-lunged, hot, ecstatic, his frame charged +with buoyancy and his heart with song. The beautiful vagabonds, endowed +with every grace, masters of all climes, and knowing no bounds,--how +many human aspirations are realized in their free, holiday lives, and +how many suggestions to the poet in their flight and song! + +Indeed, is not the bird the original type and teacher of the poet, and +do we not demand of the human lark or thrush that he "shake out his +carols" in the same free and spontaneous manner as his winged +prototype? Kingsley has shown how surely the old minnesingers and early +ballad-writers have learned of the birds, taking their key-note from the +blackbird, or the wood-lark, or the throstle, and giving utterance to a +melody as simple and unstudied. Such things as the following were surely +caught from the fields or the woods:-- + + "She sat down below a thorn, + Fine flowers in the valley, + And there has she her sweet babe borne, + And the green leaves they grow rarely." + +Or the best lyric pieces, how like they are to certain +bird-songs!--clear, ringing, ecstatic, and suggesting that challenge +and triumph which the outpouring of the male bird contains. (Is not +the genuine singing, lyrical quality essentially masculine?) Keats and +Shelley, perhaps more notably than any other English poets, have the +bird organization and the piercing wild-bird cry. This, of course, +is not saying that they are the greatest poets, but that they have +preeminently the sharp semi-tones of the sparrows and the larks. + +But when the general reader thinks of the birds of the poets, he +very naturally calls to mind the renowned birds, the lark and the +nightingale, Old World melodists, embalmed in Old World poetry, but +occasionally appearing on these shores, transported in the verse of some +callow singer. + +The very oldest poets, the towering antique bards, seem to make little +mention of the song-birds. They loved better the soaring, swooping birds +of prey, the eagle, the ominous birds, the vultures, the storks and +cranes, or the clamorous sea-birds and the screaming hawks. These +suited better the rugged, warlike character of the times and the simple, +powerful souls of the singers themselves. Homer must have heard the +twittering of the swallows, the cry of the plover, the voice of the +turtle, and the warble of the nightingale; but they were not adequate +symbols to express what he felt or to adorn his theme. Aeschylus saw in +the eagle "the dog of Jove," and his verse cuts like a sword with such a +conception. + +It is not because the old bards were less as poets, but that they were +more as men. To strong, susceptible characters, the music of nature is +not confined to sweet sounds. The defiant scream of the hawk circling +aloft, the wild whinny of the loon, the whooping of the crane, the +booming of the bittern, the vulpine bark of the eagle, the loud +trumpeting of the migratory geese sounding down out of the midnight sky; +or by the seashore, the coast of New Jersey or Long Island, the wild +crooning of the flocks of gulls, repeated, continued by the hour, +swirling sharp and shrill, rising and falling like the wind in a storm, +as they circle above the beach or dip to the dash of the waves,--are +much more welcome in certain moods than any and all mere bird-melodies, +in keeping as they are with the shaggy and untamed features of ocean +and woods, and suggesting something like the Richard Wagner music in the +ornithological orchestra. + + "Nor these alone whose notes + Nice-fingered art must emulate in vain, + But cawing rooks, and kites that swim sublime + In still repeated circles, screaming loud, + The jay, the pie, and even the boding owl, + That hails the rising moon, have charms for me," + +says Cowper. "I never hear," says Burns in one of his letters, "the +loud, solitary whistle of the curlew in a summer noon, or the wild +mixing cadence of a troop of gray plovers in an autumnal morning, +without feeling an elevation of soul like the enthusiasm of devotion or +poetry." + +Even the Greek minor poets, the swarm of them that are represented in +the Greek Anthology, rarely make affectionate mention of the birds, +except perhaps Sappho, whom Ben Jonson makes speak of the nightingale +as-- + + "The dear glad angel of the spring." + +The cicada, the locust, and the grasshopper are often referred to, but +rarely by name any of the common birds. That Greek grasshopper must +have been a wonderful creature. He was a sacred object in Greece, and +is spoken of by the poets as a charming songster. What we would say of +birds the Greek said of this favorite insect. When Socrates and Phaedrus +came to the fountain shaded by the plane-tree, where they had their +famous discourse, Socrates said: "Observe the freshness of the spot, how +charming and very delightful it is, and how summer-like and shrill +it sounds from the choir of grasshoppers." One of the poets in the +Anthology finds a grasshopper struggling in a spider's web, which he +releases with the words:-- + + "Go safe and free with your sweet voice of song." + +Another one makes the insect say to a rustic who had captured him:-- + + "Me, the Nymphs' wayside minstrel whose sweet note + O'er sultry hill is heard, and shady grove to float." + +Still another sings how a grasshopper took the place of a broken string +on his lyre, and "filled the cadence due." + + "For while six chords beneath my fingers cried, + He with his tuneful voice the seventh supplied; + The midday songster of the mountain set + His pastoral ditty to my canzonet; + And when he sang, his modulated throat + Accorded with the lifeless string I smote." + +While we are trying to introduce the lark in this country, why not try +this Pindaric grasshopper also? + +It is to the literary poets and to the minstrels of a softer age that +we must look for special mention of the song-birds and for poetical +rhapsodies upon them. The nightingale is the most general favorite, and +nearly all the more noted English poets have sung her praises. To the +melancholy poet she is melancholy, and to the cheerful she is cheerful. +Shakespeare in one of his sonnets speaks of her song as mournful, while +Martial calls her the "most garrulous" of birds. Milton sang:-- + + "Sweet bird, that shunn'st the noise of folly, + Most musical, most melancholy, + Thee, chantress, oft the woods among + I woo, to hear thy evening song." + +To Wordsworth she told another story:-- + + "O nightingale! thou surely art + A creature of ebullient heart; + These notes of thine,--they pierce and pierce,-- + Tumultuous harmony and fierce! + Thou sing'st as if the god of wine + Had helped thee to a valentine; + A song in mockery and despite + Of shades, and dews, and silent night, + And steady bliss, and all the loves + Now sleeping in these peaceful groves." + +In a like vein Coleridge sang:-- + + "'T is the merry nightingale + That crowds and hurries and precipitates + With fast, thick warble his delicious notes." + +Keats's poem on the nightingale is doubtless more in the spirit of the +bird's strain than any other. It is less a description of the song and +more the song itself. Hood called the nightingale + + "The sweet and plaintive Sappho of the dell." + +I mention the nightingale only to point my remarks upon its American +rival, the famous mockingbird of the Southern States, which is also a +nightingale,--a night-singer,--and which no doubt excels the Old World +bird in the variety and compass of its powers. The two birds belong to +totally distinct families, there being no American species which answers +to the European nightingale, as there are that answer to the robin, +the cuckoo, the blackbird, and numerous others. Philomel has the color, +manners, and habits of a thrush,--our hermit thrush,--but it is not a +thrush at all, but a warbler. I gather from the books that its song is +protracted and full rather than melodious,--a capricious, long-continued +warble, doubling and redoubling, rising and falling, issuing from the +groves and the great gardens, and associated in the minds of the poets +with love and moonlight and the privacy of sequestered walks. All our +sympathies and attractions are with the bird, and we do not forget that +Arabia and Persia are there back of its song. + +_Our_ nightingale has mainly the reputation of the caged bird, and +is famed mostly for its powers of mimicry, which are truly wonderful, +enabling the bird to exactly reproduce and even improve upon the notes +of almost any other songster. But in a state of freedom it has a song of +its own which is infinitely rich and various. It is a garrulous polyglot +when it chooses to be, and there is a dash of the clown and the buffoon +in its nature which too often flavors its whole performance, especially +in captivity; but in its native haunts, and when its love-passion is +upon it, the serious and even grand side of its character comes out. In +Alabama and Florida its song may be heard all through the sultry summer +night, at times low and plaintive, then full and strong. A friend of +Thoreau and a careful observer, who has resided in Florida, tells me +that this bird is a much more marvelous singer than it has the credit of +being. He describes a habit it has of singing on the wing on moonlight +nights, that would be worth going South to hear. Starting from a low +bush, it mounts in the air and continues its flight apparently to an +altitude of several hundred feet, remaining on the wing a number +of minutes, and pouring out its song with the utmost clearness and +abandon,--a slowly rising musical rocket that fills the night air with +harmonious sounds. Here are both the lark and nightingale in one; and if +poets were as plentiful down South as they are in New England, we should +have heard of this song long ago, and had it celebrated in appropriate +verse. But so far only one Southern poet, Wilde, has accredited the bird +this song. This he has done in the following admirable sonnet:-- + + TO THE MOCKINGBIRD + + Winged mimic of the woods! thou motley fool! + Who shall thy gay buffoonery describe? + Thine ever-ready notes of ridicule + Pursue thy fellows still with jest and gibe. + Wit--sophist--songster--Yorick of thy tribe, + Thou sportive satirist of Nature's school, + To thee the palm of scoffing we ascribe, + Arch scoffer, and mad Abbot of Misrule! + For such thou art by day--but all night long + Thou pour'st a soft, sweet, pensive, solemn strain, + As if thou didst in this, thy moonlight song, + Like to the melancholy Jaques, complain, + Musing on falsehood, violence, and wrong, + And sighing for thy motley coat again. + +Aside from this sonnet, the mockingbird has got into poetical +literature, so far as I know, in only one notable instance, and that in +the page of a poet where we would least expect to find him,--a bard who +habitually bends his ear only to the musical surge and rhythmus of total +nature, and is as little wont to turn aside for any special beauties +or points as the most austere of the ancient masters. I refer to +Walt Whitman's "Out of the cradle endlessly rocking," in which the +mockingbird plays a part. The poet's treatment of the bird is entirely +ideal and eminently characteristic. That is to say, it is altogether +poetical and not at all ornithological; yet it contains a rendering +or free translation of a bird-song--the nocturne of the mockingbird, +singing and calling through the night for its lost mate--that I consider +quite unmatched in our literature:-- + + Once, Paumanok, + When the snows had melted, and the Fifth-month grass was growing, + Up this seashore, in some briers, + Two guests from Alabama--two together, + And their nest, and four light green eggs, spotted with brown, + And every day the he-bird, to and fro, near at hand, + And every day the she-bird, crouched on her nest, silent, with bright + eyes, + And every day I, a curious boy, never too close, never disturbing them, + Cautiously peering, absorbing, translating. + + _Shine! Shine! Shine! + Pour down your warmth, great Sun! + While we bask--we two together._ + + _Two together! + Winds blow South, or winds blow North, + Day come white, or night come black, + Home, or rivers and mountains from home, + Singing all time, minding no time, + If we two but keep together._ + + Till of a sudden, + Maybe killed unknown to her mate, + One forenoon the she-bird crouched not on the nest, + Nor returned that afternoon, nor the next, + Nor ever appeared again. + + And thenceforward all summer, in the sound of the sea, + And at night, under the full of the moon, in calmer weather, + Over the hoarse surging of the sea, + Or flitting from brier to brier by day, + I saw, I heard at intervals, the remaining one, the he-bird, + The solitary guest from Alabama. + + _Blow! blow! blow! + Blow up, sea-winds, along Paumanok's shore! + I wait and I wait, till you blow my mate to me._ + + Yes, when the stars glistened, + All night long, on the prong of a moss-scalloped stake, + Down, almost amid the slapping waves, + Sat the lone singer, wonderful, causing tears. + + He called on his mate: + He poured forth the meanings which I, of all men, know. + +. . . . . . . . . . . + + _Soothe! soothe! soothe! + Close on its wave soothes the wave behind, + And again another behind, embracing and lapping, every one close, + But my love soothes not me, not me._ + + _Low hangs the moon--it rose late. + Oh it is lagging--oh I think it is heavy with love, with love._ + + _Oh madly the sea pushes, pushes upon the land, + With love--with love._ + + _O night! do I not see my love fluttering out there among the breakers! + What is that little black thing I see there in the white?_ + + _Loud! loud! loud! + Loud I call to you, my love! + High and clear I shoot my voice over the waves: + Surely you must know who is here, is here; + You must know who I am, my love._ + + _Low-hanging moon! + What is that dusky spot in your brown yellow? + Oh it is the shape, the shape of my mate! + O moon, do not keep her from me any longer._ + + _Land! land! O land! + Whichever way I turn, oh I think you could give my mate back again, + if you only would; + For I am almost sure I see her dimly whichever way I look._ + + _O rising stars! + Perhaps the one I want so much will rise, will rise with some of you._ + + _O throat! O trembling throat! + Sound clearer through the atmosphere! + Pierce the woods, the earth; + Somewhere listening to catch you, must be the one I want._ + + _Shake out, carols! + Solitary here--the night's carols! + Carols of lonesome love! Death's carols! + Carols under that lagging, yellow, waning moon! + Oh, under that moon, where she droops almost down into the sea! + O reckless, despairing carols._ + + _But soft! sink low! Soft! let me just murmur; + And do you wait a moment, you husky-noised sea; + For somewhere I believe I heard my mate responding to me, + So faint--I must be still, be still to listen! + But not altogether still, for then she might not come immediately + to me._ + + _Hither, my love! + Here I am! Here! + With this just-sustained note I announce myself to you; + This gentle call is for you, my love, for you._ + + _Do not be decoyed elsewhere! + That is the whistle of the wind--it is not my voice; + That is the fluttering, the fluttering of the spray; + Those are the shadows of leaves._ + + _O darkness! Oh in vain! + Oh I am very sick and sorrowful._ + +. . . . . . . . . . . + +The bird that occupies the second place to the nightingale in British +poetical literature is the skylark, a pastoral bird as the Philomel is +an arboreal,--a creature of light and air and motion, the companion of +the plowman, the shepherd, the harvester,--whose nest is in the stubble +and whose tryst is in the clouds. Its life affords that kind of contrast +which the imagination loves,--one moment a plain pedestrian bird, hardly +distinguishable from the ground, the next a soaring, untiring songster, +reveling in the upper air, challenging the eye to follow him and the ear +to separate his notes. + +The lark's song is not especially melodious, but is blithesome, +sibilant, and unceasing. Its type is the grass, where the bird makes its +home, abounding, multitudinous, the notes nearly all alike and all in +the same key, but rapid, swarming, prodigal, showering down as thick and +fast as drops of rain in a summer shower. + +Many noted poets have sung the praises of the lark, or been kindled +by his example. Shelley's ode and Wordsworth's "To a Skylark" are well +known to all readers of poetry, while every schoolboy will recall Hogg's +poem, beginning:-- + + "Bird of the wilderness, + Blithesome and cumberless, + Sweet be thy matin o'er moorland and lea! + Emblem of happiness, + Blest is thy dwelling-place-- + Oh to abide in the desert with thee!" + +I heard of an enthusiastic American who went about English fields +hunting a lark with Shelley's poem in his hand, thinking no doubt to use +it as a kind of guide-book to the intricacies and harmonies of the song. +He reported not having heard any larks, though I have little doubt they +were soaring and singing about him all the time, though of course they +did not sing to his ear the song that Shelley heard. The poets are +the best natural historians, only you must know how to read them. They +translate the facts largely and freely. A celebrated lady once said to +Turner, "I confess I cannot see in nature what you do." "Ah, madam," +said the complacent artist, "don't you wish you could!" + +Shelley's poem is perhaps better known, and has a higher reputation +among literary folk, than Wordsworth's; it is more lyrical and +lark-like; but it is needlessly long, though no longer than the lark's +song itself, but the lark can't help it, and Shelley can. I quote only a +few stanzas:-- + + "In the golden lightning + Of the sunken sun, + O'er which clouds are bright'ning + Thou dost float and run, + Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun. + + "The pale purple even + Melts around thy flight; + Like a star of heaven, + In the broad daylight + Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight, + + "Keen as are the arrows + Of that silver sphere, + Whose intense lamp narrows + In the white dawn clear, + Until we hardly see--we feel that it is there; + + "All the earth and air + With thy voice is loud, + As, when Night is bare, + From one lonely cloud + The moon rains out her beams, and Heaven is overflowed." + +Wordsworth has written two poems upon the lark, in one of which he calls +the bird "pilgrim of the sky." This is the one quoted by Emerson in +"Parnassus." Here is the concluding stanza:-- + + "Leave to the nightingale her shady wood; + A privacy of glorious light is thine, + Whence thou dost pour upon the world a flood + Of harmony, with instinct more divine; + Type of the wise, who soar, but never roam, + True to the kindred points of heaven and home." + +The other poem I give entire:-- + + "Up with me! up with me into the clouds! + For thy song, Lark, is strong; + Up with me, up with me into the clouds! + Singing, singing, + With clouds and sky about thee ringing, + Lift me, guide me till I find + That spot which seems so to thy mind! + + "I have walked through wilderness dreary, + And to-day my heart is weary; + Had I now the wings of a Faery + Up to thee would I fly. + There is madness about thee, and joy divine + In that song of thine; + Lift me, guide me high and high + To thy banqueting-place in the sky. + + "Joyous as morning + Thou art laughing and scorning; + Thou hast a nest for thy love and thy rest, + And, though little troubled with sloth, + Drunken Lark! thou wouldst be loth + To be such a traveler as I. + Happy, happy Liver! + With a soul as strong as a mountain river, + Pouring out praise to the Almighty Giver, + Joy and jollity be with us both! + + "Alas! my journey, rugged and uneven, + Through prickly moors or dusty ways must wind; + But hearing thee, or others of thy kind, + As full of gladness and as free of heaven, + I, with my fate contented, will plod on, + And hope for higher raptures, when life's day is done." + + +But better than either--better and more than a hundred pages--is +Shakespeare's simple line,-- + + "Hark, hark, the lark at heaven's gate sings," + +or John Lyly's, his contemporary,-- + + "Who is't now we hear? + None but the lark so shrill and clear; + Now at heaven's gate she claps her wings, + The morn not waking till she sings." + +We have no well-known pastoral bird in the Eastern States that answers +to the skylark. The American pipit or titlark and the shore lark, both +birds of the far north, and seen in the States only in fall and winter, +are said to sing on the wing in a similar strain. Common enough in our +woods are two birds that have many of the habits and manners of the +lark--the water-thrush and the golden-crowned thrush, or oven-bird. They +are both walkers, and the latter frequently sings on the wing up aloft +after the manner of the lark. Starting from its low perch, it rises in +a spiral flight far above the tallest trees, and breaks out in a clear, +ringing, ecstatic song, sweeter and more richly modulated than the +skylark's, but brief, ceasing almost before you have noticed it; whereas +the skylark goes singing away after you have forgotten him and returned +to him half a dozen times. + +But on the Great Plains, of the West there; is a bird whose song +resembles the skylark's quite closely and is said to be not at all +inferior. This is Sprague's pipit, sometimes called the Missouri +skylark, an excelsior songster, which from far up in the transparent +blue rains down its notes for many minutes together. It is, no doubt, +destined to figure in the future poetical literature of the West. + +Throughout the northern and eastern parts of the Union the lark would +find a dangerous rival in the bobolink, a bird that has no European +prototype, and no near relatives anywhere, standing quite alone, unique, +and, in the qualities of hilarity and musical tintinnabulation, with +a song unequaled. He has already a secure place in general literature, +having been laureated by no less a poet than Bryant, and invested with a +lasting human charm in the sunny page of Irving, and is the only one of +our songsters, I believe, that the mockingbird cannot parody or imitate. +He affords the most marked example of exuberant pride, and a glad, +rollicking, holiday spirit, that can be seen among our birds. Every note +expresses complacency and glee. He is a beau of the first pattern, and, +unlike any other bird of my acquaintance, pushes his gallantry to the +point of wheeling gayly into the train of every female that comes along, +even after the season of courtship is over and the matches are all +settled; and when she leads him on too wild a chase, he turns, lightly +about and breaks out with a song is precisely analogous to a burst of +gay and self-satisfied laughter, as much as to say, _"Ha! ha! ha! I +must have my fun, Miss Silverthimble, thimble, thimble, if I break every +heart in the meadow, see, see, see!"_ + +At the approach of the breeding season the bobolink undergoes a complete +change; his form changes, his color changes, his flight changes. From +mottled brown or brindle he becomes black and white, earning, in some +localities, the shocking name of "skunk bird;" his small, compact form +becomes broad and conspicuous, and his ordinary flight is laid aside for +a mincing, affected gait, in which he seems to use only the very tips of +his wings. It is very noticeable what a contrast he presents to his mate +at this season, not only in color but in manners, she being as shy and +retiring as he is forward and hilarious. Indeed, she seems disagreeably +serious and indisposed to any fun or jollity, scurrying away at his +approach, and apparently annoyed at every endearing word and look. It +is surprising that all this parade of plumage and tinkling of cymbals +should be gone through with and persisted in to please a creature so +coldly indifferent as she really seems to be. If Robert O'Lincoln has +been stimulated into acquiring this holiday uniform and this musical +gift by the approbation of Mrs. Robert, as Darwin, with his sexual +selection principle, would have us believe, then there must have been +a time when the females of this tribe were not quite so chary of their +favors as they are now. Indeed, I never knew a female bird of any kind +that did not appear utterly indifferent to the charms of voice and +plumage that the male birds are so fond of displaying. But I am inclined +to believe that the males think only of themselves and of outshining +each other, and not at all of the approbation of their mates, as, in an +analogous case in a higher species, it is well known whom the females +dress for, and whom they want to kill with envy! + +I know of no other song-bird that expresses so much self-consciousness +and vanity, and comes so near being an ornithological coxcomb. The +red-bird, the yellowbird, the indigo-bird, the oriole, the cardinal +grosbeak, and others, all birds of brilliant plumage and musical +ability, seem quite unconscious of self, and neither by tone nor act +challenge the admiration of the beholder. + +By the time the bobolink reaches the Potomac, in September, he has +degenerated into a game-bird that is slaughtered by tens of thousands in +the marshes. I think the prospects now are of his gradual extermination, +as gunners and sportsmen are clearly on the increase, while the limit of +the bird's productivity in the North has no doubt been reached long ago. +There are no more meadows to be added to his domain there, while he is +being waylaid and cut off more and more on his return to the South. +It is gourmand eat gourmand, until in half a century more I expect the +blithest and merriest of our meadow songsters will have disappeared +before the rapacity of human throats. + +But the poets have had a shot at him in good time, and have preserved +some of his traits. Bryant's poem on this subject does not compare with +his lines "To a Water-Fowl,"--a subject so well suited to the peculiar, +simple, and deliberate motion of his mind; at the same time it is fit +that the poet who sings of "The Planting of the Apple-Tree" should +render into words the song of "Robert of Lincoln." I subjoin a few +stanzas:-- + + ROBERT OF LINCOLN + + Merrily swinging on brier and weed, + Near to the nest of his little dame, + Over the mountain-side or mead, + Robert of Lincoln is telling his name: + Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, + Spink, spank, spink: + Snug and safe is that nest of ours, + Hidden among the summer flowers. + Chee, chee, chee. + + Robert of Lincoln is gayly drest, + Wearing a bright black wedding-coat, + White are his shoulders and white his crest, + Hear him call in his merry note: + Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, + Spink, spank, spink: + Look what a nice new coat is mine, + Sure there was never a bird so fine. + Chee, chee, chee. + + Robert of Lincoln's Quaker wife, + Pretty and quiet, with plain brown wings, + Passing at home a patient life, + Broods in the grass while her husband sings. + Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, + Spink, spank, spink: + Brood, kind creature; you need not fear + Thieves and robbers while I am here. + Chee, chee, chee. + + +But it has been reserved for a practical ornithologist, Mr. Wilson +Flagg, to write by far the best poem on the bobolink that I have yet +seen. It is much more in the mood and spirit of the actual song than +Bryant's poem:-- + + THE O'LINCOLN FAMILY + + A flock of merry singing-birds were sporting in the grove; + Some were warbling cheerily, and some were making love: + There were Bobolincon, Wadolincon, Winterseeble, Conquedle,-- + A livelier set was never led by tabor, pipe, or fiddle,-- + Crying, "Phew, shew, Wadolincon, see, see, Bobolincon, + Down among the tickletops, hiding in the buttercups! + I know the saucy chap, I see his shining cap + Bobbing in the clover there--see, see, see!" + + Up flies Bobolincon, perching on an apple-tree, + Startled by his rival's song, quickened by his raillery. + Soon he spies the rogue afloat, curveting in the air, + And merrily he turns about, and warns him to beware! + "'T is you that would a-wooing go, down among the rushes O! + But wait a week, till flowers are cheery,--wait a week,and, + ere you marry, + Be sure of a house wherein to tarry! + Wadolink, Whiskodink, Tom Denny, wait, wait, wait!" + + Every one's a funny fellow; every one's a little mellow; + Follow, follow, follow, follow, o'er the hill and in the hollow! + Merrily, merrily, there they hie; now they rise and now they fly; + They cross and turn, and in and out, and down in the middle, + and wheel about,-- + With a "Phew, shew, Wadolincon! listen to me, Bobolincon!-- + Happy's the wooing that's speedily doing, that's speedily doing, + That's merry and over with the bloom of the clover! + Bobolincon, Wadolincon, Winterseeble, follow, follow me!" + + +Many persons, I presume, have admired Wordsworth's poem on the cuckoo, +without recognizing its truthfulness, or how thoroughly, in the main, +the description applies to our own species. If the poem had been written +in New England or New York, it could not have suited our case better:-- + + "O blithe New-comer! I have heard, + I hear thee and rejoice, + O Cuckoo! shall I call thee Bird, + Or but a wandering Voice? + + "While I am lying on the grass, + Thy twofold shout I hear, + From hill to hill it seems to pass, + At once far off, and near. + + "Though babbling only to the Vale, + Of sunshine and of flowers, + Thou bringest unto me a tale + Of visionary hours. + + "Thrice welcome, darling of the Spring! + Even yet thou art to me + No bird, but an invisible thing, + A voice, a mystery; + + "The same whom in my schoolboy days + I listened to; that Cry + Which made me look a thousand ways + In bush, and tree, and sky. + + "To seek thee did I often rove + Through woods and on the green; + And thou wert still a hope, a love; + Still longed for, never seen. + + "And I can listen to thee yet; + Can lie upon the plain + And listen, till I do beget + That golden time again. + + "O blessed Bird! the earth we pace + Again appears to be + An unsubstantial, faery place; + That is fit home for thee!" + +Logan's stanzas, "To the Cuckoo," have less merit both as poetry and +natural history, but they are older, and doubtless the latter poet +benefited by them. Burke admired them so much that, while on a visit to +Edinburgh, he sought the author out to compliment him:-- + + "Hail, beauteous stranger of the grove! + Thou messenger of spring! + Now Heaven repairs thy rural seat, + And woods thy welcome sing. + + "What time the daisy decks the green, + Thy certain voice we hear; + Hast thou a star to guide thy path, + Or mark the rolling year? + + . . . . . . . . + + "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 titbits. 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 illustrates 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 "Titmouse," 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 bumpkin 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 Dick 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 cock 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 passions 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 principal 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 shores. 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-cock; indeed, he puts quite a flock of birds in this song:-- + + "The ouzel-cock 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 sturdy 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 Titmouse," 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 reassuring 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 passionate 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 titmouse becomes them well:-- + + "Up and away for life! be fleet!-- + The frost-king ties my fumbling feet, + Sings in my ears, my hands are stones, + Curdles the blood to the marble bones, + Tugs at the heart-strings, numbs the sense, + And hems in life with narrowing fence. + Well, in this broad bed lie and sleep,-- + The punctual stars will vigil keep,-- + Embalmed by purifying cold; + The wind shall sing their dead march old, + The snow is no ignoble shroud, + The moon thy mourner, and the cloud. + + "Softly,--but this way fate was pointing, + 'T was coming fast to such anointing, + When piped a tiny voice hard by, + Gay and polite, a cheerful cry, + _Chick-chickadeedee!_ saucy note, + Out of sound heart and merry throat, + As if it said 'Good day, good sir! + Fine afternoon, old passenger! + Happy to meet you in these places, + Where January brings few faces.' + + "This poet, though he lived apart, + Moved by his hospitable heart, + Sped, when I passed his sylvan fort, + To do the honors of his court, + As fits a feathered lord of land; + Flew near, with soft wing grazed my hands + Hopped on the bough, then darting low, + Prints his small impress on the snow, + Shows feats of his gymnastic play, + Head downward, clinging to the spray. + + "Here was this atom in full breath, + Hurling defiance at vast death; + This scrap of valor just for play + Fronts the north-wind in waistcoat gray, + As if to shame my weak behavior; + I greeted loud my little savior, + 'You pet! what dost here? and what for? + In these woods, thy small Labrador, + At this pinch, wee San Salvador! + What fire burns in that little chest, + So frolic, stout, and self-possest? + Henceforth I wear no stripe but thine; + Ashes and jet all hues outshine. + Why are not diamonds black and gray, + To ape thy dare-devil array? + And I affirm, the spacious North + Exists to draw thy virtue forth. + I think no virtue goes with size; + The reason of all cowardice + Is, that men are overgrown, + And, to be valiant, must come down + To the titmouse dimension.' + + . . . . . . . . + + "I think old Caesar must have heard + In northern Gaul my dauntless bird, + And, echoed in some frosty wold, + Borrowed thy battle-numbers bold. + And I will write our annals new + And thank thee for a better clew. + I, who dreamed not when I came here + To find the antidote of fear, + Now hear thee say in Roman key, + _Poean! Veni, vidi, vici."_ + +A late bird-poem, and a good one of its kind, is Celia Thaxter's +"Sandpiper," which recalls Bryant's "Water-Fowl" in its successful +rendering of the spirit and atmosphere of the scene, and the +distinctness with which the lone bird, flitting along the beach, is +brought before the mind. It is a woman's or a feminine poem, as Bryant's +is characteristically a man's. + +The sentiment or feeling awakened by any of the aquatic fowls is +preeminently one of loneliness. The wood duck which your approach starts +from the pond or the marsh, the loon neighing down out of the April +sky, the wild goose, the curlew, the stork, the bittern, the sandpiper, +awaken quite a different train of emotions from those awakened by +the land-birds. They all have clinging to them some reminiscence and +suggestion of the sea. Their cries echo its wildness and desolation; +their wings are the shape of its billows. + +Of the sandpipers there are many varieties, found upon the coast and +penetrating inland along the rivers and water-courses, one of the most +interesting of the family, commonly called the "tip-up," going up all +the mountain brooks and breeding in the sand along their banks; but +the characteristics are the same in all, and the eye detects little +difference except in size. + +The walker on the beach sees it running or flitting before him, +following up the breakers and picking up the aquatic insects left on the +sands; and the trout-fisher along the farthest inland stream likewise +intrudes upon its privacy. Flitting along from stone to stone seeking +its food, the hind part of its body "teetering" up and down, its soft +gray color blending it with the pebbles and the rocks, or else skimming +up or down the stream on its long, convex wings, uttering its shrill +cry, the sandpiper is not a bird of the sea merely; and Mrs. Thaxter's +poem is as much for the dweller inland as for the dweller upon the +coast:-- + + THE SANDPIPER + + Across the narrow beach we flit, + One little sandpiper and I; + And fast I gather, bit by bit, + The scattered driftwood bleached and dry. + The wild waves reach their hands for it, + The wild wind raves, the tide runs high, + As up and down the beach we flit,-- + One little sandpiper and I. + + Above our heads the sullen clouds + Scud black and swift across the sky; + Like silent ghosts in misty shrouds + Stand out the white lighthouses high. + Almost as far as eye can reach + I see the close-reefed vessels fly, + As fast we flit along the beach,-- + One little sandpiper and I. + + I watch him as he skims along, + Uttering his sweet and mournful cry; + He starts not at my fitful song, + Or flash of fluttering drapery; + He has no thought of any wrong; + He scans me with a fearless eye. + Stanch friends are we, well tried and strong, + The little sandpiper and I. + + Comrade, where wilt thou be to-night + When the loosed storm breaks furiously? + My driftwood fire will burn so bright! + To what warm shelter canst thou fly? + I do not fear for thee, though wroth + The tempest rushes through the sky; + For are we not God's children both, + Thou, little sandpiper, and I? + +Others of our birds have been game for the poetic muse, but in most +cases the poets have had some moral or pretty conceit to convey, and +have not loved the bird first. Mr. Lathrop preaches a little in his +pleasant poem, "The Sparrow," but he must some time have looked upon the +bird with genuine emotion to have written the first two stanzas:-- + + "Glimmers gay the leafless thicket + Close beside my garden gate, + Where, so light, from post to wicket, + Hops the sparrow, blithe, sedate: + Who, with meekly folded wing, + Comes to sun himself and sing. + + "It was there, perhaps, last year, + That his little house he built; + For he seems to perk and peer, + And to twitter, too, and tilt + The bare branches in between, + With a fond, familiar mien." + +The bluebird has not been overlooked, and Halleek, Longfellow, and Mrs. +Sigourney have written poems upon him, but from none of them does there +fall that first note of his in early spring,--a note that may be called +the violet of sound, and as welcome to the ear, heard above the cold, +damp earth; as is its floral type to the eye a few weeks later Lowell's +two lines come nearer the mark:-- + + "The bluebird, shifting his light load of song + From post to post along the cheerless fence." + +Or the first swallow that comes twittering up the southern valley, +laughing a gleeful, childish laugh, and awakening such memories in +the heart, who has put him in a poem? So the hummingbird, too, escapes +through the finest meshes of rhyme. + +The most melodious of our songsters, the wood thrush and the hermit +thrush,--birds whose strains, more than any others, express harmony +and serenity,--have not yet, that I am aware, had reared to them their +merited poetic monument, unless, indeed, Whitman has done this service +for the hermit thrush in his "President Lincoln's Burial Hymn." Here +the threnody is blent of three chords, the blossoming lilac, the evening +star, and the hermit thrush, the latter playing the most prominent part +throughout the composition. It is the exalting and spiritual utterance +of the "solitary singer" that calms and consoles the poet when the +powerful shock of the President's assassination comes upon him, and he +flees from the stifling atmosphere and offensive lights and conversation +of the house,-- + + "Forth to hiding, receiving night that talks not, +Down to the shores of the water, the path by the swamp in the dimness, +To the solemn shadowy cedars and ghostly pines so still." + +Numerous others of our birds would seem to challenge attention by their +calls and notes. There is the Maryland yellowthroat, for instance, +standing in the door of his bushy tent, and calling out as you approach, +_"which way, sir! which way, sir!"_ If he says this to the ear of common +folk, what would he not say to the poet? One of the peewees says _"stay +there!"_ with great emphasis. The cardinal grosbeak calls out _"what +cheer" "what cheer;"_ " the bluebird says _"purity," "purity," "purity;"_ +the brown thrasher, or ferruginous thrush, according to Thoreau, calls +out to the farmer planting his corn, _"drop it," "drop it," "cover it +up," "cover it up"_ The yellow-breasted chat says _"who," "who"_ and +_"tea-boy"_ What the robin says, caroling that simple strain from +the top of the tall maple, or the crow with his hardy haw-haw, or the +pedestrain meadowlark sounding his piercing and long-drawn note in the +spring meadows, the poets ought to be able to tell us. I only know the +birds all have a language which is very expressive, and which is easily +translatable into the human tongue. + + + + +II TOUCHES OF NATURE + + +I + +WHEREVER Nature has commissioned one creature to prey upon another, she +has preserved the balance by forewarning that other creature of what she +has done. Nature says to the cat, "Catch the mouse," and she equips her +for that purpose; but on the selfsame day she says to the mouse, "Be +wary,--the cat is watching for you." Nature takes care that none of her +creatures have smooth sailing, the whole voyage at least. Why has she +not made the mosquito noiseless and its bite itchless? Simply because +in that case the odds would be too greatly in its favor. She has taken +especial pains to enable the owl to fly softly and silently, because the +creatures it preys upon are small and wary, and never venture far from +their holes. She has not shown the same caution in the case of the crow, +because the crow feeds on dead flesh, or on grubs and beetles, or fruit +and grain, that do not need to be approached stealthily. The big fish +love to cat up the little fish, and the little fish know it, and, on the +very day they are hatched, seek shallow water, and put little sandbars +between themselves and their too loving parents. + +How easily a bird's tail, or that of any fowl, or in fact any part of +the plumage, comes out when the hold of its would-be capturer is upon +this alone; and how hard it yields in the dead bird! No doubt there is +relaxation in the former case. Nature says to the pursuer, "Hold on," +and to the pursued, "Let your tail go." What is the tortuous, zigzag +course of those slow-flying moths for but to make it difficult for the +birds to snap them up? The skunk is a slow, witless creature, and the +fox and lynx love its meat; yet it carries a bloodless weapon that +neither likes to face. + +I recently heard of an ingenious method a certain other simple and +slow-going creature has of baffling its enemy. A friend of mine was +walking in the fields when he saw a commotion in the grass a few +yards off. Approaching the spot, he found a snake--the common garter +snake--trying to swallow a lizard. And how do you suppose the lizard was +defeating the benevolent designs of the snake? By simply taking hold +of its own tail and making itself into a hoop. The snake went round and +round, and could find neither beginning nor end. Who was the old giant +that found himself wrestling with Time? This little snake had a tougher +customer the other day in the bit of eternity it was trying to swallow. + +The snake itself has not the same wit, because I lately saw a black +snake in the woods trying to swallow the garter snake, and he had made +some headway, though the little snake was fighting every inch of the +ground, hooking his tail about sticks and bushes, and pulling back with +all his might, apparently not liking the look of things down there +at all. I thought it well to let him have a good taste of his own +doctrines, when I put my foot down against further proceedings. + +This arming of one creature against another is often cited as an +evidence of the wisdom of Nature, but it is rather an evidence of her +impartiality. She does not care a fig more for one creature than for +another, and is equally on the side of both, or perhaps it would be +better to say she does not care a fig for either. Every creature must +take its chances, and man is no exception. We can ride if we know +how and are going her way, or we can be run over if we fall or make a +mistake. Nature does not care whether the hunter slay the beast or the +beast the hunter; she will make good compost of them both, and her ends +are prospered whichever succeeds. + + "If the red slayer think he slays, + Or if the slain think he is slain, + They know not well the subtle ways + I keep, and pass, and turn again." + +What is the end of Nature? Where is the end of a sphere? The sphere +balances at any and every point. So everything in Nature is at the top, +and yet no _one_ thing is at the top. + +She works with reference to no measure of time, no limit of space, and +with an abundance of material, not expressed by exhaustless. Did you +think Niagara a great exhibition of power? What is that, then, that +withdraws noiseless and invisible in the ground about, and of which +Niagara is but the lifting of the finger? + +Nature is thoroughly selfish, and looks only to her own ends. One +thing she is bent upon, and that is keeping up the supply, multiplying +endlessly and scattering as she multiplies. Did Nature have in view our +delectation when she made the apple, the peach, the plum, the cherry? +Undoubtedly; but only as a means to her own private ends. What a bribe +or a wage is the pulp of these delicacies to all creatures to come and +sow their seed! And Nature has taken care to make the seed indigestible, +so that, though the fruit be eaten, the germ is not, but only planted. + +God made the crab, but man made the pippin; but the pippin cannot +propagate itself, and exists only by violence and usurpation. Bacon +says, "It is easier to deceive Nature than to force her," but it seems +to me the nurserymen really force her. They cut off the head of a savage +and clap on the head of a fine gentleman, and the crab becomes a Swaar +or a Baldwin. Or is it a kind of deception practiced upon Nature, which +succeeds only by being carefully concealed? If we could play the same +tricks upon her in the human species, how the great geniuses could be +preserved and propagated, and the world stocked with them! But what a +frightful condition of things that would be! No new men, but a tiresome +and endless repetition of the old ones,--a world perpetually stocked +with Newtons and Shakespeares! + +We say Nature knows best, and has adapted this or that to our wants or +to our constitution,--sound to the ear, light and color to the eye; but +she has not done any such thing, but has adapted man to these things. +The physical cosmos is the mould, and man is the molten metal that is +poured into it. The light fashioned the eye, the laws of sound made +the ear; in fact, man is the outcome of Nature and not the reverse. +Creatures that live forever in the dark have no eyes; and would not any +one of our senses perish and be shed, as it were, in a world where it +could not be used? + + + +II + +It is well to let down our metropolitan pride a little. Man thinks +himself at the top, and that the immense display and prodigality of +Nature are for him. But they are no more for him than they are for +the birds and beasts, and he is no more at the top than they are. He +appeared upon the stage when the play had advanced to a certain point, +and he will disappear from the stage when the play has reached another +point, and the great drama will go on without him. The geological ages, +the convulsions and parturition throes of the globe, were to bring him +forth no more than the beetles. Is not all this wealth of the seasons, +these solar and sidereal influences, this depth and vitality and +internal fire, these seas, and rivers, and oceans, and atmospheric +currents, as necessary to the life of the ants and worms we tread under +foot as to our own? And does the sun shine for me any more than for yon +butterfly? What I mean to say is, we cannot put our finger upon this +or that and say, Here is the end of Nature. The Infinite cannot be +measured. The plan of Nature is so immense,--but she has no plan, +no scheme, but to go on and on forever. What is size, what is time, +distance, to the Infinite? Nothing. The Infinite knows no time, no +space, no great, no small, no beginning, no end. + +I sometimes think that the earth and the worlds are a kind of nervous +ganglia in an organization of which we can form no conception, or less +even than that. If one of the globules of blood that circulate in our +veins were magnified enough million times, we might see a globe teeming +with life and power. Such is this earth of ours, coursing in the veins +of the Infinite. Size is only relative, and the imagination finds no end +to the series either way. + + + +III + +Looking out of the car window one day, I saw the pretty and unusual +sight of an eagle sitting upon the ice in the river, surrounded by half +a dozen or more crows. The crows appeared as if looking up to the +noble bird and attending his movements. "Are those its young?" asked a +gentleman by my side. How much did that man know--not about eagles, +but about Nature? If he had been familiar with geese or hens, or with +donkeys, he would not have asked that question. The ancients had an +axiom that he who knew one truth knew all truths; so much else becomes +knowable when one vital fact is thoroughly known. You have a key, a +standard, and cannot be deceived. Chemistry, geology, astronomy, natural +history, all admit one to the same measureless interiors. + +I heard a great man say that he could see how much of the theology +of the day would fall before the standard of him who had got even the +insects. And let any one set about studying these creatures carefully, +and he will see the force of the remark. We learn the tremendous +doctrine of metamorphosis from the insect world; and have not the bee +and the ant taught man wisdom from the first? I was highly edified +the past summer by observing the ways and doings of a colony of black +hornets that established themselves under one of the projecting gables +of my house. This hornet has the reputation of being a very ugly +customer, but I found it no trouble to live on the most friendly terms +with her. She was as little disposed to quarrel as I was. She is indeed +the eagle among hornets, and very noble and dignified in her bearing. +She used to come freely into the house and prey upon the flies. You +would hear that deep, mellow hum, and see the black falcon poising on +wing, or striking here and there at the flies, that scattered on her +approach like chickens before a hawk. When she had caught one, she would +alight upon some object and proceed to dress and draw her game. The +wings were sheared off, the legs cut away, the bristles trimmed, then +the body thoroughly bruised and broken. When the work was completed, +the fly was rolled up into a small pellet, and with it under her arm +the hornet flew to her nest, where no doubt in due time it was properly +served up on the royal board. Every dinner inside these paper walls is a +state dinner, for the queen is always present. + +I used to mount the ladder to within two or three feet of the nest +and observe the proceedings. I at first thought the workshop must be +inside,--a place where the pulp was mixed, and perhaps treated with +chemicals; for each hornet, when she came with her burden of materials, +passed into the nest, and then, after a few moments, emerged again and +crawled to the place of building. But I one day stopped up the entrance +with some cotton, when no one happened to be on guard, and then observed +that, when the loaded hornet could not get inside, she, after some +deliberation, proceeded to the unfinished part and went forward with her +work. Hence I inferred that maybe the hornet went inside to report and +to receive orders, or possibly to surrender her material into fresh +hands. Her career when away from the nest is beset with dangers; the +colony is never large, and the safe return of every hornet is no doubt a +matter of solicitude to the royal mother. + +The hornet was the first paper-maker, and holds the original patent. The +paper it makes is about like that of the newspaper; nearly as firm, and +made of essentially the same material,--woody fibres scraped from old +rails and boards. And there is news on it, too, if one could make out +the characters. + +When I stopped the entrance with cotton, there was no commotion or +excitement, as there would have been in the case of yellow-jackets. +Those outside went to pulling, and those inside went to pushing and +chewing. Only once did one of the outsiders come down and look me +suspiciously in the face, and inquire very plainly what my business +might be up there. I bowed my head, being at the top of a twenty-foot +ladder, and had nothing to say. + +The cotton was chewed and moistened about the edges till every fibre +was loosened, when the mass dropped. But instantly the entrance was +made smaller, and changed so as to make the feat of stopping it more +difficult. + + + +IV + +There are those who look at Nature from the standpoint of +conventional and artificial life,--from parlor windows and through +gilt-edged poems,--the sentimentalists. At the other extreme are those +who do not look at Nature at all, but are a grown part of her, and look +away from her toward the other class,--the backwoodsmen and pioneers, +and all rude and simple persons. Then there are those in whom the +two are united or merged,--the great poets and artists. In them the +sentimentalist is corrected and cured, and the hairy and taciturn +frontiersman has had experience to some purpose. The true poet knows +more about Nature than the naturalist because he carries her open +secrets in his heart. Eckermann could instruct Goethe in ornithology, +but could not Goethe instruct Eckermann in the meaning and mystery of +the bird? It is my privilege to number among my friends a man who has +passed his life in cities amid the throngs of men, who never goes to +the woods or to the country, or hunts or fishes, and yet he is the true +naturalist. I think he studies the orbs. I think day and night and the +stars, and the faces of men and women, have taught him all there is +worth knowing. + +We run to Nature because we are afraid of man. Our artists paint the +landscape because they cannot paint the human face. If we could look +into the eyes of a man as coolly as we can into the eyes of an animal, +the products of our pens and brushes would be quite different from what +they are. + + + +V + +But I suspect, after all, it makes but little difference to which school +you go, whether to the woods or to the city. A sincere man learns pretty +much the same things in both places. The differences are superficial, +the resemblances deep and many. The hermit is a hermit, and the poet +a poet, whether he grow up in the town or the country. I was forcibly +reminded of this fact recently on opening the works of Charles Lamb +after I had been reading those of our Henry Thoreau. Lamb cared nothing +for nature, Thoreau for little else. One was as attached to the city and +the life of the street and tavern as the other to the country and the +life of animals and plants. Yet they are close akin. They give out the +same tone and are pitched in about the same key. Their methods are the +same; so are their quaintness and scorn of rhetoric. Thoreau has the +drier humor, as might be expected, and is less stomachic. There is more +juice and unction in Lamb, but this he owes to his nationality. Both are +essayists who in a less reflective age would have been poets pure and +simple. Both were spare, high-nosed men, and I fancy a resemblance even +in their portraits. Thoreau is the Lamb of New England fields and +woods, and Lamb is the Thoreau of London streets and clubs. There was a +willfulness and perversity about Thoreau, behind which he concealed his +shyness and his thin skin, and there was a similar foil in Lamb, though +less marked, on account of his good-nature; that was a part of his +armor, too. + + + +VI + +Speaking of Thoreau's dry humor reminds me how surely the old English +unctuous and sympathetic humor is dying out or has died out of our +literature. Our first notable crop of authors had it,--Paulding, Cooper, +Irving, and in a measure Hawthorne,--but our later humorists have it not +at all, but in its stead an intellectual quickness and perception of the +ludicrous that is not unmixed with scorn. + +One of the marks of the great humorist, like Cervantes, or Sterne, or +Scott, is that he approaches his subject, not through his head merely, +but through his heart, his love, his humanity. His humor is full of +compassion, full of the milk of human kindness, and does not separate +him from his subject, but unites him to it by vital ties. How Sterne +loved Uncle Toby and sympathized with him, and Cervantes his luckless +knight! I fear our humorists would have made fun of them, would have +shown them up and stood aloof superior, and "laughed a laugh of merry +scorn." Whatever else the great humorist or poet, or any artist, may be +or do, there is no contempt in his laughter. And this point cannot +be too strongly insisted on in view of the fact that nearly all our +humorous writers seem impressed with the conviction that their own +dignity and self-respect require them to _look down_ upon what they +portray. But it is only little men who look down upon anything or speak +down to anybody. One sees every day how clear it is that specially fine, +delicate, intellectual persons cannot portray satisfactorily coarse, +common, uncultured characters. Their attitude is at once scornful and +supercilious. The great man, like Socrates, or Dr. Johnson, or Abraham +Lincoln, is just as surely coarse as he is fine, but the complaint I +make with our humorists is that they are fine and not coarse in any +healthful and manly sense. A great part of the best literature and the +best art is of the vital fluids, the bowels, the chest, the appetites, +and is to be read and judged only through love and compassion. Let us +pray for unction, which is the marrowfat of humor, and for humility, +which is the badge of manhood. + +As the voice of the American has retreated from his chest to his +throat and nasal passages, so there is danger that his contribution to +literature will soon cease to imply any blood or viscera, or healthful +carnality, or depth of human and manly affection, and will be the fruit +entirely of our toploftical brilliancy and cleverness. + +What I complain of is just as true of the essayists and the critics as +of the novelists. The prevailing tone here also is born of a feeling of +immense superiority. How our lofty young men, for instance, look down +upon Carlyle, and administer their masterly rebukes to him! But see how +Carlyle treats Burns, or Scott, or Johnson, or Novalis, or any of his +heroes. Ay, there's the rub; he makes heroes of them, which is not a +trick of small natures. He can say of Johnson that he was "moonstruck," +but it is from no lofty height of fancied superiority, but he uses the +word as a naturalist uses a term to describe an object he loves. + +What we want, and perhaps have got more of than I am ready to admit, is +a race of writers who affiliate with their subjects, and enter into them +through their blood, their sexuality and manliness, instead of +standing apart and criticising them and writing about them through mere +intellectual cleverness and "smartness." + + + +VII + +There is a feeling in heroic poetry, or in a burst of eloquence, that I +sometimes catch in quite different fields. I caught it this morning, +for instance, when I saw the belated trains go by, and knew how they +had been battling with storm, darkness, and distance, and had triumphed. +They were due at my place in the night, but did not pass till after +eight o'clock in the morning. Two trains coupled together,--the fast +mail and the express,--making an immense line of coaches hauled by two +engines. They had come from the West, and were all covered with snow and +ice, like soldiers with the dust of battle upon them. They had massed +their forces, and were now moving with augmented speed, and with a +resolution that was epic and grand. Talk about the railroad dispelling +the romance from the landscape; if it does, it brings the heroic element +in. The moving train is a proud spectacle, especially on stormy and +tempestuous nights. When I look out and see its light, steady and +unflickering as the planets, and hear the roar of its advancing tread, +or its sound diminishing in the distance, I am comforted and made stout +of heart. O night, where is thy stay! O space, where is thy victory! Or +to see the fast mail pass in the morning is as good as a page of Homer. +It quickens one's pulse for all day. It is the Ajax of trains. I hear +its defiant, warning whistle, hear it thunder over the bridges, and its +sharp, rushing ring among the rocks, and in the winter mornings see its +glancing, meteoric lights, or in summer its white form bursting through +the silence and the shadows, its plume of smoke lying flat upon its +roofs and stretching far behind,--a sight better than a battle. It +is something of the same feeling one has in witnessing any wild, free +careering in storms, and in floods in nature; or in beholding the +charge of an army; or in listening to an eloquent man, or to a hundred +instruments of music in full blast,--it is triumph, victory. What is +eloquence but mass in motion,--a flood, a cataract, an express train, a +cavalry charge? We are literally carried away, swept from our feet, and +recover our senses again as best we can. + +I experienced the same emotion when I saw them go by with the sunken +steamer. The procession moved slowly and solemnly. It was like a funeral +cortege,--a long line of grim floats and barges and boxes, with their +bowed and solemn derricks, the pall-bearers; and underneath in her +watery grave, where she had been for six months, the sunken steamer, +partially lifted and borne along. Next day the procession went back +again, and the spectacle was still more eloquent. The steamer had been +taken to the flats above and raised till her walking-beam was out of +water; her bell also was exposed and cleaned and rung, and the wreckers' +Herculean labor seemed nearly over. But that night the winds and the +storms held high carnival. It looked like preconcerted action on the +part of tide, tempest, and rain to defeat these wreckers, for the +elements all pulled together and pulled till cables and hawser snapped +like threads. Back the procession started, anchors were dragged or lost, +immense new cables were quickly taken ashore and fastened to trees; but +no use: trees were upturned, the cables stretched till they grew +small and sang like harp-strings, then parted; back, back against the +desperate efforts of the men, till within a few feet of her old +grave, when there was a great commotion among the craft, floats were +overturned, enormous chains parted, colossal timbers were snapped +like pipestems, and, with a sound that filled all the air, the steamer +plunged to the bottom again in seventy feet of water. + + + +VIII + +I am glad to observe that all the poetry of the midsummer harvesting has +not gone out with the scythe and the whetstone. The line of mowers was a +pretty sight, if one did not sympathize too deeply with the human backs +turned up there to the sun, and the sound of the whetstone, coming up +from the meadows in the dewy morning, was pleasant music. But I find the +sound of the mowing-machine and the patent reaper is even more in tune +with the voices of Nature at this season. The characteristic sounds of +midsummer are the sharp, whirring crescendo of the cicada or harvest +fly, and the rasping, stridulous notes of the nocturnal insects. The +mowing-machine repeats and imitates these sounds. 'T is like the hum of +a locust or the shuffling of a mighty grasshopper. More than that, the +grass and the grain at this season have become hard. The timothy stalk +is like a file; the rye straw is glazed with flint; the grasshoppers +snap sharply as they fly up in front of you; the bird-songs have ceased; +the ground crackles under foot; the eye of day is brassy and merciless; +and in harmony with all these things is the rattle of the mower and the +hay-tedder. + + + +IX + +'T is an evidence of how directly we are related to Nature, that we more +or less sympathize with the weather, and take on the color of the day. +Goethe said he worked easiest on a high barometer. One is like a chimney +that draws well some days and won't draw at all on others, and the +secret is mainly in the condition of the atmosphere. Anything positive +and decided with the weather is a good omen. A pouring rain may be more +auspicious than a sleeping sunshine. When the stove draws well, the fogs +and fumes will leave your mind. I find there is great virtue in the bare +ground, and have been much put out at times by those white angelic +days we have in winter, such as Whittier has so well described in these +lines:-- + + "Around the glistening wonder bent + The blue walls of the firmament; + No cloud above, no earth below, + A universe of sky and snow." + +On such days my spirit gets snow-blind; all things take on the same +color, or no color; my thought loses its perspective; the inner world is +a blank like the outer, and all my great ideals are wrapped in the same +monotonous and expressionless commonplace. The blackest of black days +are better. + +Why does snow so kill the landscape and blot out our interest in it? Not +merely because it is cold, and the symbol of death,--for I imagine as +many inches of apple blossoms would have about the same effect,--but +because it expresses nothing. White is a negative; a perfect blank. The +eye was made for color, and for the earthy tints, and, when these are +denied it, the mind is very apt to sympathize and to suffer also. + +Then when the sap begins to mount in the trees, and the spring languor +comes, does not one grow restless indoors? The sun puts out the fire, +the people say, and the spring sun certainly makes one's intellectual +light grow dim. Why should not a man sympathize with the seasons and the +moods and phases of Nature? He is an apple upon this tree, or rather he +is a babe at this breast, and what his great mother feels affects him +also. + + + +X + +I have frequently been surprised, in late fall and early winter, to +see how unequal or irregular was the encroachment of the frost upon the +earth. If there is suddenly a great fall in the mercury, the frost lays +siege to the soil and effects a lodgment here and there, and extends its +conquests gradually. At one place in the field you can easily run your +staff through into the soft ground, when a few rods farther on it will +be as hard as a rock. A little covering of dry grass or leaves is a +great protection. The moist places hold out long, and the spring runs +never freeze. You find the frost has gone several inches into the plowed +ground, but on going to the woods, and poking away the leaves and debris +under the hemlocks and cedars, you find there is no frost at all. The +Earth freezes her ears and toes and naked places first, and her body +last. + +If heat were visible, or if we should represent it say by smoke, then +the December landscape would present a curious spectacle. We should see +the smoke lying low over the meadows, thickest in the hollows and moist +places, and where the turf is oldest and densest. It would cling to the +fences and ravines. Under every evergreen tree we should see the vapor +rising and filling the branches, while the woods of pine and hemlock +would be blue with it long after it had disappeared from the open +country. It would rise from the tops of the trees, and be carried this +way and that with the wind. The valleys of the great rivers, like the +Hudson, would overflow with it. Large bodies of water become regular +magazines in which heat is stored during the summer, and they give it +out again during the fall and early winter. The early frosts keep well +back from the Hudson, skulking behind the ridges, and hardly come over +in sight at any point. But they grow bold as the season advances, till +the river's fires, too, I are put out and Winter covers it with his +snows. + + + +XI + +One of the strong and original strokes of Nature was when she made the +loon. It is always refreshing to contemplate a creature so positive and +characteristic. He is the great diver and flyer under water. The loon +is the genius loci of the wild northern lakes, as solitary as they are. +Some birds represent the majesty of nature, like the eagles; others its +ferocity, like the hawks; others its cunning, like the crow; others +its sweetness and melody, like the song-birds. The loon represents +its wildness and solitariness. It is cousin to the beaver. It has the +feathers of a bird and the fur of an animal, and the heart of both. It +is as quick and cunning as it is bold and resolute. It dives with such +marvelous quickness that the shot of the gunner get there just in time +"to cut across a circle of descending tail feathers and a couple of +little jets of water flung upward by the web feet of the loon." When +disabled so that it can neither dive nor fly, it is said to face its +foe, look him in the face with its clear, piercing eye, and fight +resolutely till death. The gunners say there is something in its +wailing, piteous cry, when dying, almost human in its agony. The loon +is, in the strictest sense, an aquatic fowl. It can barely walk upon the +land, and one species at least cannot take flight from the shore. But in +the water its feet are more than feet, and its wings more than wings. It +plunges into this denser air and flies with incredible speed. Its head +and beak form a sharp point to its tapering neck. Its wings are far in +front and its legs equally far in the rear, and its course through the +crystal depths is like the speed of an arrow. In the northern lakes it +has been taken forty feet under water upon hooks baited for the great +lake trout. I had never seen one till last fall, when one appeared on +the river in front of my house. I knew instantly it was the loon. Who +could not tell a loon a half mile or more away, though he had never seen +one before? The river was like glass, and every movement of the bird as +it sported about broke the surface into ripples, that revealed it far +and wide. Presently a boat shot out from shore, and went ripping up +the surface toward the loon. The creature at once seemed to divine the +intentions of the boatman, and sidled off obliquely, keeping a sharp +lookout as if to make sure it was pursued. A steamer came down and +passed between them, and when the way was again clear, the loon was +still swimming on the surface. Presently it disappeared under the +water, and the boatman pulled sharp and hard. In a few moments the bird +reappeared some rods farther on, as if to make an observation. Seeing it +was being pursued, and no mistake, it dived quickly, and, when it came +up again, had gone many times as far as the boat had in the same space +of time. Then it dived again, and distanced its pursuer so easily that +he gave over the chase and rested upon his oars. But the bird made a +final plunge, and, when it emerged upon the surface again, it was over +a mile away. Its course must have been, and doubtless was, an actual +flight under water, and half as fast as the crow flies in the air. + +The loon would have delighted the old poets. Its wild, demoniac laughter +awakens the echoes on the solitary lakes, and its ferity and hardiness +are kindred to those robust spirits. + + + +XII + +One notable difference between man and the four-footed animals which +has often occurred to me is in the eye, and the greater perfection, or +rather supremacy, of the sense of sight in the human species. All +the animals--the dog, the fox, the wolf, the deer, the cow, the +horse--depend mainly upon the senses of hearing and smell. Almost their +entire powers of discrimination are confined to these two senses. The +dog picks his master out of the crowd by smell, and the cow her calf out +of the herd. Sight is only partial recognition. The question can only +be settled beyond all doubt by the aid of the nose. The fox, alert and +cunning as he is, will pass within a few yards of the hunter and not +know him from a stump. A squirrel will run across your lap, and a marmot +between your feet, if you are motionless. When a herd of cattle see a +strange object, they are not satisfied till each one has sniffed it; and +the horse is cured of his fright at the robe, or the meal-bag, or other +object, as soon as he can be induced to smell it. There is a great deal +of speculation in the eye of an animal, but very little science. Then +you cannot catch an animal's eye; he looks at you, but not into your +eye. The dog directs his gaze toward your face, but, for aught you can +tell, it centres upon your mouth or nose. The same with your horse or +cow. Their eye is vague and indefinite. + +Not so with the birds. The bird has the human eye in its clearness, its +power, and its supremacy over the other senses. How acute their sense +of smell may be is uncertain; their hearing is sharp enough, but their +vision is the most remarkable. A crow or a hawk, or any of the larger +birds, will not mistake you for a stump or a rock, stand you never so +still amid the bushes. But they cannot separate you from your horse or +team. A hawk reads a man on horseback as one animal, and reads it as a +horse. None of the sharp-scented animals could be thus deceived. + +The bird has man's brain also in its size. The brain of a song-bird is +even much larger in proportion than that of the greatest human monarch, +and its life is correspondingly intense and high-strung. But the bird's +eye is superficial. It is on the outside of his head. It is round, that +it may take in a full circle at a glance. + +All the quadrupeds emphasize their direct forward gaze by a +corresponding movement of the ears, as if to supplement and aid one +sense with another. But man's eye seldom needs the confirmation of +his ear, while it is so set, and his head so poised, that his look is +forcible and pointed without being thus seconded. + + + +XIII + +I once saw a cow that had lost her cud. How forlorn and desolate and +sick at heart that cow looked! No more rumination, no more of that +second and finer mastication, no more of that sweet and juicy reverie +under the spreading trees, or in the stall. Then the farmer took an +elder and scraped the bark and put something with it, and made the cow a +cud, and, after due waiting, the experiment took, a response came back, +and the mysterious machinery was once more in motion, and the cow was +herself again. + +Have you, O poet, or essayist, or story-writer, never lost your cud, +and wandered about days and weeks without being able to start a single +thought or an image that tasted good,--your literary appetite dull or +all gone, and the conviction daily growing that it was all over with you +in that direction? A little elder-bark, something fresh and bitter from +the woods, is about the best thing you can take. + + + +XIV + +Notwithstanding what I have elsewhere said about the desolation of snow, +when one looks closely it is little more than a thin veil after all, and +takes and repeats the form of whatever it covers. Every path through +the fields is just as plain as before. On every hand the ground sends +tokens, and the curves and slopes are not of the snow, but of the earth +beneath. In like manner the rankest vegetation hides the ground less +than we think. Looking across a wide valley in the month of July, I have +noted that the fields, except the meadows, had a ruddy tinge, and that +corn, which near at hand seemed to completely envelop the soil, at that +distance gave only a slight shade of green. The color of the ground +everywhere predominated, and I doubt not that, if we could see the earth +from a point sufficiently removed, as from the moon, its ruddy hue, like +that of Mars, would alone be visible. + +What is a man but a miniature earth, with many disguises in the way of +manners, possessions, dissemblances? Yet through all--through all the +work of his hands and all the thoughts of his mind--how surely the +ground quality of him, the fundamental hue, whether it be this or that, +makes itself felt and is alone important! + + + +XV + +Men follow their noses, it is said. I have wondered why the Greek did +not follow his nose in architecture,--did not copy those arches that +spring from it as from a pier, and support his brow,--but always and +everywhere used the post and the lintel. There was something in that +face that has never reappeared in the human countenance. I am thinking +especially of that straight, strong profile. Is it really godlike, or +is this impression the result of association? But any suggestion or +reminiscence of it in the modern face at once gives one the idea of +strength. It is a face strong in the loins, or it suggests a high, +elastic instep. It is the face of order and proportion. Those arches are +the symbols of law and self-control. The point of greatest interest is +the union of the nose with the brow,--that strong, high embankment; +it makes the bridge from the ideal to the real sure and easy. All the +Greek's ideas passed readily into form. In the modern face the arches +are more or less crushed, and the nose is severed from the brow,--hence +the abstract and the analytic; hence the preponderance of the +speculative intellect over creative power. + + + +XVI + +I have thought that the boy is the only true lover of Nature, and that +we, who make such a dead set at studying and admiring her, come very +wide of the mark. "The nonchalance of a boy who is sure of his dinner," +says our Emerson, "is the healthy attitude of humanity." The boy is a +part of Nature; he is as indifferent, as careless, as vagrant as she. He +browses, he digs, he hunts, he climbs, he halloes, he feeds on roots +and greens and mast. He uses things roughly and without sentiment. The +coolness with which boys will drown dogs or cats, or hang them to trees, +or murder young birds, or torture frogs or squirrels, is like Nature's +own mercilessness. + +Certain it is that we often get some of the best touches of nature from +children. Childhood is a world by itself, and we listen to children when +they frankly speak out of it with a strange interest. There is such a +freedom from responsibility and from worldly wisdom,--it is heavenly +wisdom. There is no sentiment in children, because there is no ruin; +nothing has gone to decay about them yet,--not a leaf or a twig. Until +he is well into his teens, and sometimes later, a boy is like a +bean-pod before the fruit has developed,--indefinite, succulent, rich in +possibilities which are only vaguely outlined. He is a pericarp merely. +How rudimental are all his ideas! I knew a boy who began his +school composition on swallows by saying there were two kinds of +swallows,--chimney swallows and swallows. + +Girls come to themselves sooner; are indeed, from the first, more +definite and "translatable." + + + +XVII + +Who will write the natural history of the boy? One of the first points +to be taken account of is his clannishness. The boys of one neighborhood +are always pitted against those of an adjoining neighborhood, or of one +end of the town against those of the other end. A bridge, a river, a +railroad track, are always boundaries of hostile or semi-hostile tribes. +The boys that go up the road from the country school hoot derisively +at those that go down the road, and not infrequently add the insult of +stones; and the down-roaders return the hooting and the missiles with +interest. + +Often there is open war, and the boys meet and have regular battles. A +few years since, the boys of two rival towns on opposite sides of the +Ohio River became so belligerent that the authorities had to interfere. +Whenever an Ohio boy was caught on the West Virginia side of the river, +he was unmercifully beaten; and when a West Virginia boy was discovered +on the Ohio side, he was pounced upon in the same manner. One day a +vast number of boys, about one hundred and fifty on a side, met +by appointment upon the ice and engaged in a pitched battle. Every +conceivable missile was used, including pistols. The battle, says the +local paper, raged with fury for about two hours. One boy received +a wound behind the ear, from the effects of which he died the next +morning. More recently the boys of a large manufacturing town of New +Jersey were divided into two hostile clans that came into frequent +collision. One Saturday both sides mustered their forces, and a regular +fight ensued, one boy here also losing his life from the encounter. + +Every village and settlement is at times the scene of these youthful +collisions When a new boy appears in the village, or at the country +school, how the other boys crowd around him and take his measure, or +pick at him and insult him to try his mettle! + +I knew a boy, twelve or thirteen years old, who was sent to help a +drover with some cattle as far as a certain village ten miles from his +home. After the place was reached, and while the boy was eating his +cracker and candies, he strolled about the village, and fell in with +some other boys playing upon a bridge. In a short time a large number of +children of all sizes had collected upon the bridge. The new-comer was +presently challenged by the boys of his own age to jump with them. This +he readily did, and cleared their farthest mark. Then he gave them a +sample of his stone-throwing, and at this pastime he also far surpassed +his competitors. Before long, the feeling of the crowd began to set +against him, showing itself first in the smaller fry, who began half +playfully to throw pebbles and lumps of dry earth at him. Then they +would run up slyly and strike him with sticks. Presently the large +ones began to tease him in like manner, till the contagion of hostility +spread, and the whole pack was arrayed against the strange boy. He kept +them at bay for a few moments with his stick, till, the feeling mounting +higher and higher, he broke through their ranks, and fled precipitately +toward home, with the throng of little and big at his heels. Gradually +the girls and smaller boys dropped behind, till at the end of the +first fifty rods only two boys of about his own size, with wrath and +determination in their faces, kept up the pursuit. But to these he added +the final insult of beating them at running also, and reached, much +blown, a point beyond which they refused to follow. + +The world the boy lives in is separate and distinct from the world +the man lives in. It is a world inhabited only by boys. No events are +important or of any moment save those affecting boys. How they +ignore the presence of their elders on the street, shouting out their +invitations, their appointments, their pass-words from our midst, as +from the veriest solitude! They have peculiar calls, whistles, signals, +by which they communicate with each other at long distances, like birds +or wild creatures. And there is as genuine a wildness about these notes +and calls as about those of a fox or a coon. + +The boy is a savage, a barbarian, in his taste,--devouring roots, +leaves, bark, unripe fruit; and in the kind of music or discord he +delights in,--of harmony he has no perception. He has his fashions that +spread from city to city. In one of our large cities the rage at one +time was an old tin can with a string attached, out of which they +tortured the most savage and ear-splitting discords. The police were +obliged to interfere and suppress the nuisance. On another occasion, at +Christmas, they all came forth with tin horns, and nearly drove the town +distracted with the hideous uproar. + +Another savage trait of the boy is his untruthfulness. Corner him, and +the chances are ten to one he will lie his way out. Conscience is +a plant of slow growth in the boy. If caught in one lie, he invents +another. I know a boy who was in the habit of eating apples in school. +His teacher finally caught him in the act, and, without removing his eye +from him, called him to the middle of the floor. + +"I saw you this time," said the teacher. + +"Saw me what?" said the boy innocently. + +"Bite that apple," replied the teacher. + +"No, sir," said the rascal. + +"Open your mouth;" and from its depths the teacher, with his thumb and +finger, took out the piece of apple. + +"Did n't know it was there," said the boy, unabashed. + +Nearly all the moral sentiment and graces are late in maturing in the +boy. He has no proper self-respect till past his majority. Of course +there are exceptions, but they are mostly windfalls. The good boys +die young. We lament the wickedness and thoughtlessness of the young +vagabonds at the same time that we know it is mainly the acridity and +bitterness of the unripe fruit that we are lamenting. + + + + +III A BIRD MEDLEY + +People who have not made friends with the birds do not know how much +they miss. Especially to one living in the country, of strong local +attachments and an observing turn of mind, does an acquaintance with +the birds form a close and invaluable tie. The only time I saw Thomas +Carlyle, I remember his relating, apropos of this subject, that in his +earlier days he was sent on a journey to a distant town on some business +that gave him much bother and vexation, and that on his way back home, +forlorn and dejected, he suddenly heard the larks singing all about +him,--soaring and singing, just as they did about his father's fields, +and it comforted him and cheered him up amazingly. + +Most lovers of the birds can doubtless recall similar experiences from +their own lives. Nothing wonts me to a new place more than the birds. I +go, for instance, to take up my abode in the country,--to plant myself +upon unfamiliar ground. I know nobody, and nobody knows me. The roads, +the fields, the hills, the streams, the woods, are all strange. I look +wistfully upon them, but they know me not. They give back nothing to +my yearning gaze. But there, on every hand, are the long-familiar +birds,--the same ones I left behind me, the same ones I knew in my +youth,--robins, sparrows, swallows, bobolinks, crows, hawks, high-holes, +meadowlarks, all there before me, and ready to renew and perpetuate the +old associations. Before my house is begun, theirs is completed; before +I have taken root at all, they are thoroughly established. I do not yet +know what kind of apples my apple-trees bear, but there, in the cavity +of a decayed limb, the bluebirds are building a nest, and yonder, on +that branch, the social sparrow is busy with hairs and straws. The +robins have tasted the quality of my cherries, and the cedar-birds have +known every red cedar on the place these many years. While my house +is yet surrounded by its scaffoldings, the phoebe-bird has built her +exquisite mossy nest on a projecting stone beneath the eaves, a robin +has filled a niche in the wall with mud and dry grass, the chimney +swallows are going out and in the chimney, and a pair of house wrens are +at home in a snug cavity over the door, and, during an April snowstorm, +a number of hermit thrushes have taken shelter in my unfinished +chambers. Indeed, I am in the midst of friends before I fairly know it. +The place is not so new as I had thought. It is already old; the birds +have supplied the memories of many decades of years. + +There is something almost pathetic in the fact that the birds remain +forever the same. You grow old, your friends die or move to distant +lands, events sweep on, and all things are changed. Yet there in your +garden or orchard are the birds of your boyhood, the same notes, the +same calls, and, to all intents and purposes, the identical birds +endowed with perennial youth. The swallows, that built so far out of +your reach beneath the eaves of your father's barn, the same ones now +squeak and chatter beneath the eaves of your barn. The warblers and +shy wood-birds you pursued with such glee ever so many summers ago, and +whose names you taught to some beloved youth who now, perchance, sleeps +amid his native hills, no marks of time or change cling to them; and +when you walk out to the strange woods, there they are, mocking you with +their ever-renewed and joyous youth. The call of the high-holes, the +whistle of the quail, the strong piercing note of the meadowlark, the +drumming of the grouse,--how these sounds ignore the years, and strike +on the ear with the melody of that springtime when the world was young, +and life was all holiday and romance! + +During any unusual tension of the feelings or emotions, how the note or +song of a single bird will sink into the memory, and become inseparably +associated with your grief or joy! Shall I ever again be able to hear +the song of the oriole without being pierced through and through? Can it +ever be other than a dirge for the dead to me? Day after day, and week +after week, this bird whistled and warbled in a mulberry by the door, +while sorrow, like a pall, darkened my day. So loud and persistent was +the singer that his note teased and worried my excited ear. + + "Hearken to yon pine warbler, + Singing aloft in the tree! + Hearest thou, O traveler! + What he singeth to me? + + "Not unless God made sharp thine ear + With sorrow such as mine, + Out of that delicate lay couldst thou + Its heavy tale divine." + +It is the opinion of some naturalists that birds never die what is +called a natural death, but come to their end by some murderous or +accidental means; yet I have found sparrows and vireos in the fields and +woods dead or dying, that bore no marks of violence; and I remember that +once in my childhood a redbird fell down in the yard exhausted, and was +brought in by the girl; its bright scarlet image is indelibly stamped +upon my recollection. It is not known that birds have any distempers +like the domestic fowls, but I saw a social sparrow one day quite +disabled by some curious malady that suggested a disease that sometimes +attacks poultry; one eye was nearly put out by a scrofulous-looking +sore, and on the last joint of one wing there was a large tumorous or +fungous growth that crippled the bird completely. On another occasion +I picked up one that appeared well, but could not keep its centre of +gravity when in flight, and so fell to the ground. + +One reason why dead birds and animals are so rarely found is, that on +the approach of death their instinct prompts them to creep away in some +hole or under some cover, where they will be least liable to fall a prey +to their natural enemies. It is doubtful if any of the game-birds, like +the pigeon and grouse, ever die of old age, or the semi-game-birds, like +the bobolink, or the "century living" crow; but in what other form can +death overtake the hummingbird, or even the swift and the barn swallow? +Such are true birds of the air; they may be occasionally lost at sea +during their migrations, but, so far as I know, they are not preyed upon +by any other species. + +The valley of the Hudson, I find, forms a great natural highway for the +birds, as do doubtless the Connecticut, the Susquehanna, the Delaware, +and all other large water-courses running north and south. The birds +love an easy way, and in the valleys of the rivers they find a road +already graded for them; and they abound more in such places throughout +the season than they do farther inland. The swarms of robins that come +to us in early spring are a delight to behold. In one of his poems +Emerson speaks of + + "April's bird, + Blue-coated, flying before from tree to tree;" + +but April's bird with me is the robin, brisk, vociferous, musical, +dotting every field, and larking it in every grove; he is as easily atop +at this season as the bobolink is a month or two later. The tints of +April are ruddy and brown,--the new furrow and the leafless trees,--and +these are the tints of its dominant bird. + +From my dining-room window I look, or did look, out upon a long stretch +of smooth meadow, and as pretty a spring sight as I ever wish to behold +was this field, sprinkled all over with robins, their red breasts turned +toward the morning sun, or their pert forms sharply outlined against +lingering patches of snow. Every morning for weeks I had those robins +for breakfast; but what they had I never could find out. + +After the leaves are out, and gayer colors come into fashion, the robin +takes a back seat. He goes to housekeeping in the old apple-tree, or, +what he likes better, the cherry-tree. A pair reared their domestic +altar (of mud and dry grass) in one of the latter trees, where I saw +much of them. The cock took it upon himself to keep the tree free of all +other robins during cherry time, and its branches were the scene of +some lively tussles every hour in the day. The innocent visitor would +scarcely alight before the jealous cock was upon him; but while he was +thrusting the intruder out at one side, a second would be coming in on +the other. He managed, however, to protect his cherries very well, but +had so little time to eat the fruit himself that we got fully our share. + +I have frequently seen the robin courting, and have always been +astonished and amused at the utter coldness and indifference of the +female. The females of every species of bird, however, I believe, have +this in common,--they are absolutely free from coquetry, or any airs and +wiles whatever. In most cases, Nature has given the song and the plumage +to the other sex, and all the embellishing and acting is done by the +male bird. + +I am always at home when I see the passenger pigeon. Few spectacles +please me more than to see clouds of these birds sweeping across the +sky, and few sounds are more agreeable to my ear than their lively +piping and calling in the spring woods. They come in such multitudes, +they people the whole air; they cover townships, and make the solitary +places gay as with a festival. The naked woods are suddenly blue as with +fluttering ribbons and scarfs, and vocal as with the voices of children. +Their arrival is always unexpected. We know April will bring the robins +and May the bobolinks, but we do not know that either they or any +other month will bring the passenger pigeon. Sometimes years elapse and +scarcely a flock is seen. Then, of a sudden, some March or April they +come pouring over the horizon from the south or southwest, and for a few +days the land is alive with them. + +The whole race seems to be collected in a few vast swarms or +assemblages. Indeed, I have sometimes thought there was only one such +in the United States, and that it moved in squads, and regiments, and +brigades, and divisions, like a giant army. The scouting and foraging +squads are not unusual, and every few years we see larger bodies of +them, but rarely indeed do we witness the spectacle of the whole vast +tribe in motion. Sometimes we hear of them in Virginia, or Kentucky +and Tennessee; then in Ohio or Pennsylvania; then in New York; then in +Canada or Michigan or Missouri. They are followed from point to point, +and from State to State, by human sharks, who catch and shoot them for +market. + +A year ago last April, the pigeons flew for two or three days up and +down the Hudson. In long bowing lines, or else in dense masses, they +moved across the sky. It was not the whole army, but I should think at +least one corps of it; I had not seen such a flight of pigeons since +my boyhood. I went up to the top of the house, the better to behold the +winged procession. The day seemed memorable and poetic in which such +sights occurred. + + [Footnote: This proved to be the last flight of the pigeons + in the valley of the Hudson. The whole tribe has now (1895) + been nearly exterminated by pot-hunters. The few that still + remain appear to be scattered through the Northern States + in small, loose flocks.] + +While I was looking at the pigeons, a flock of wild geese went by, +harrowing the sky northward. The geese strike a deeper chord than the +pigeons. Level and straight they go as fate to its mark. I cannot tell +what emotions these migrating birds awaken in me,--the geese especially. +One seldom sees more than a flock or two in a season, and what a spring +token it is! The great bodies are in motion. It is like the passage of +a victorious army. No longer inch by inch does spring come, but these +geese advance the standard across zones at one pull. How my desire goes +with them; how something in me, wild and migratory, plumes itself and +follows fast! + + "Steering north, with raucous cry, + Through tracts and provinces of sky, + Every night alighting down + In new landscapes of romance, + Where darkling feed the clamorous clans + By lonely lakes to men unknown." + +Dwelling upon these sights, I am reminded that the seeing of spring +come, not only upon the great wings of the geese and the lesser wings +of the pigeons and birds, but in the many more subtle and indirect +signs and mediums, is also a part of the compensation of living in +the country. I enjoy not less what may be called the negative side of +spring,--those dark, dank, dissolving days, + yellow sposh and mud and water everywhere,--yet who can stay long +indoors? The humidity is soft and satisfying to the smell, and to the +face and hands, and, for the first time for months, there is the fresh +odor of the earth. The air is full of the notes and calls of the first +birds. The domestic fowls refuse their accustomed food and wander far +from the barn. Is it something winter has left, or spring has dropped, +that they pick up? And what is it that holds me so long standing in the +yard or in the fields? Something besides the ice and snow melts and runs +away with the spring floods. + +The little sparrows and purple finches are so punctual in announcing +spring, that some seasons one wonders how they know without looking in +the almanac, for surely there are no signs of spring out of doors. Yet +they will strike up as cheerily amid the driving snow as if they had +just been told that to-morrow is the first day of March. About the same +time I notice the potatoes in the cellar show signs of sprouting. +They, too, find out so quickly when spring is near. Spring comes by two +routes,--in the air and underground, and often gets here by the latter +course first. She undermines Winter when outwardly his front is nearly +as bold as ever. I have known the trees to bud long before, by outward +appearances, one would expect them to. The frost was gone from the +ground before the snow was gone from the surface. + +But Winter hath his birds also; some of them such tiny bodies that one +wonders how they withstand the giant cold,--but they do. Birds live on +highly concentrated food,--the fine seeds of weeds and grasses, and +the eggs and larvae of insects. Such food must be very stimulating and +heating. A gizzard full of ants, for instance, what spiced and seasoned +extract is equal to that? Think what virtue there must be in an ounce +of gnats or mosquitoes, or in the fine mysterious food the chickadee and +the brown creeper gather in the winter woods! It is doubtful if these +birds ever freeze when fuel enough can be had to keep their little +furnaces going. And, as they get their food entirely from the limbs and +trunks of trees, like the woodpeckers, their supply is seldom interfered +with by the snow. The worst annoyance must be the enameling of ice our +winter woods sometimes get. + +Indeed, the food question seems to be the only serious one with the +birds. Give them plenty to eat, and no doubt the majority of them would +face our winters. I believe all the woodpeckers are winter birds, except +the high-hole or yellow-hammer, and he obtains the greater part of +his subsistence from the ground, and is not a woodpecker at all in his +habits of feeding. Were it not that it has recourse to budding, the +ruffed grouse would be obliged to migrate. The quail--a bird, no doubt, +equally hardy, but whose food is at the mercy of the snow--is frequently +cut off by our severe winters when it ventures to brave them, which is +not often. Where plenty of the berries of the red cedar can be had, the +cedar-bird will pass the winter in New York. The old ornithologists say +the bluebird migrates to Bermuda; but in the winter of 1874-75, severe +as it was, a pair of them wintered with me eighty miles north of +New York city. They seem to have been decided in their choice by the +attractions of my rustic porch and the fruit of a sugar-berry tree +(celtis--a kind of tree-lotus) that stood in front of it. They lodged in +the porch and took their meals in the tree. Indeed, they became regular +lotus-eaters. Punctually at dusk they were in their places on a +large laurel root in the top of the porch, whence, however, they were +frequently routed by an indignant broom that was jealous of the neatness +of the porch floor. But the pair would not take any hints of this kind, +and did not give up their quarters in the porch or their lotus berries +till spring. + +Many times during the winter the sugar-berry tree was visited by a flock +of cedar-birds that also wintered in the vicinity. At such times it +was amusing to witness the pretty wrath of the bluebirds, scolding and +threatening the intruders, and begrudging them every berry they ate. The +bluebird cannot utter a harsh or unpleasing note. Indeed, he seems +to have but one language, one speech, for both love and war, and the +expression of his indignation is nearly as musical as his song. The male +frequently made hostile demonstrations toward the cedar-birds, but did +not openly attack them, and, with his mate, appeared to experience great +relief when the poachers had gone. + +I had other company in my solitude also, among the rest a distinguished +arrival from the far north, the pine grosbeak, a bird rarely seen in +these parts, except now and then a single specimen. But in the winter of +1875, heralding the extreme cold weather, and no doubt in consequence of +it, there was a large incursion of them into this State and New England. +They attracted the notice of the country people everywhere. I first saw +them early in December about the head of the Delaware. I was walking +along a cleared ridge with my gun, just at sundown, when I beheld two +strange birds sitting in a small maple. On bringing one of them down, I +found it was a bird I had never before seen; in color and shape like the +purple finch, but quite as large again in size. From its heavy beak, +I at once recognized it as belonging to the family of grosbeaks. A few +days later I saw large numbers of them in the woods, on the ground, +and in the trees. And still later, and on till February, they were very +numerous on the Hudson, coming all about my house,--more familiar even +than the little snowbird, hopping beneath the windows, and looking up +at me apparently with as much curiosity as I looked down upon them. +They fed on the buds of the sugar maples and upon frozen apples in the +orchard. They were mostly young birds and females, colored very +much like the common sparrow, with now and then visible the dull +carmine-colored head and neck of an old male. + +Other northern visitors that tarried with me the same winter were the +tree or Canada sparrow and the redpoll, the former a bird larger than +the social sparrow or hair-bird, but otherwise much resembling it, and +distinguishable by a dark spot in the middle of its breast; the latter a +bird the size and shape of the common goldfinch, with the same manner +of flight and nearly the same note or cry, but darker than the winter +plumage of the goldfinch, and with a red crown and a tinge of red on the +breast. Little bands of these two species lurked about the barnyard all +winter, picking up the hayseed, the sparrow sometimes venturing in on +the haymow when the supply outside was short. I felt grateful to them +for their company. They gave a sort of ornithological air to every +errand I had to the barn. + +Though a number of birds face our winters, and by various shifts worry +through till spring, some of them permanent residents, and some of them +visitors from the far north, yet there is but one genuine snow bird, +nursling of the snow, and that is the snow bunting, a bird that seems +proper to this season, heralding the coming storm, sweeping by on bold +and rapid wing, and calling and chirping as cheerily as the songsters +of May. In its plumage it reflects the winter landscape,--an expanse of +white surmounted or streaked with gray and brown; a field of snow with +a line of woods or a tinge of stubble. It fits into the scene, and does +not appear to lead a beggarly and disconsolate life, like most of our +winter residents. During the ice-harvesting on the river, I see them +flitting about among the gangs of men, or floating on the cakes of ice, +picking and scratching amid the droppings of the horses. They love the +stack and hay-barn in the distant field, where the farmer fodders his +cattle upon the snow, and every red-root, ragweed, or pigweed left +standing in the fall adds to their winter stores. + +Though this bird, and one or two others, like the chickadee and +nuthatch, are more or less complacent and cheerful during the winter, +yet no bird can look our winters in the face and sing, as do so many of +the English birds. Several species in Great Britain, their biographers +tell us, sing the winter through, except during the severest frosts; but +with us, as far south as Virginia, and, for aught I know, much farther, +the birds are tuneless at this season. The owls, even, do not hoot, nor +the hawks scream. + +Among the birds that tarry briefly with us in the spring on their way to +Canada and beyond, there is none I behold with so much pleasure as the +white-crowned sparrow. I have an eye out for him all through April +and the first week in May. He is the rarest and most beautiful of the +sparrow kind. He is crowned, as some hero or victor in the games. He is +usually in company with his congener, the white-throated sparrow, but +seldom more than in the proportion of one to twenty of the latter. +Contrasted with this bird, he looks like its more fortunate brother, +upon whom some special distinction has been conferred, and who is, from +the egg, of finer make and quality. His sparrow color of ashen gray +and brown is very clear and bright, and his form graceful. His whole +expression, however, culminates in a singular manner in his crown. The +various tints of the bird are brought to a focus here and intensified, +the lighter ones becoming white, and the deeper ones nearly black. +There is the suggestion of a crest, also, from a habit the bird has +of slightly elevating this part of its plumage, as if to make more +conspicuous its pretty markings. They are great scratchers, and will +often remain several minutes scratching in one place, like a hen. Yet, +unlike the hen and like all hoppers, they scratch with both feet at +once, which is by no means the best way to scratch. + +The white-throats often sing during their sojourning both in fall and +spring; but only on one occasion have I ever heard any part of the song +of the white-crowned, and that proceeded from what I took to be a young +male, one October morning, just as the sun was rising. It was pitched +very low, like a half-forgotten air, but it was very sweet. It was the +song of the vesper sparrow and the white-throat in one. In his breeding +haunts he must be a superior songster, but he is very chary of his music +while on his travels. + +The sparrows are all meek and lowly birds. They are of the grass, the +fences, the low bushes, the weedy wayside places. Nature has denied them +all brilliant tints, but she has given them sweet and musical voices. +Theirs are the quaint and simple lullaby songs of childhood. The +white-throat has a timid, tremulous strain, that issues from the low +bushes or from behind the fence, where its cradle is hid. The song +sparrow modulates its simple ditty as softly as the lining of its own +nest. The vesper sparrow has only peace and gentleness in its strain. + +What pretty nests, too, the sparrows build! Can anything be more +exquisite than a sparrow's nest under a grassy or mossy bank? What care +the bird has taken not to disturb one straw or spear of grass, or +thread of moss! You cannot approach it and put your hand into it without +violating the place more or less, and yet the little architect has +wrought day after day and left no marks. There has been an excavation, +and yet no grain of earth appears to have been moved. If the nest had +slowly and silently grown like the grass and the moss, it could not +have been more nicely adjusted to its place and surroundings. There is +absolutely nothing to tell the eye it is there. Generally a few spears +of dry grass fall down from the turf above and form a slight screen +before it. How commonly and coarsely it begins, blending with the debris +that lies about, and how it refines and comes into form as it approaches +the centre, which is modeled so perfectly and lined so softly! Then, +when the full complement of eggs is laid, and incubation has fairly +begun, what a sweet, pleasing little mystery the silent old bank holds! + +The song sparrow, whose nest I have been describing, displays a +more marked individuality in its song than any bird with which I am +acquainted. Birds of the same species generally all sing alike, but I +have observed numerous song sparrows with songs peculiarly their own. +Last season, the whole summer through, one sang about my grounds like +this: _swee-e-t, swee-e-t, swee-e-t, bitter._ Day after day, from May +to September, I heard this strain, which I thought a simple but very +profound summing-up of life, and wondered how the little bird had +learned it so quickly. The present season, I heard another with a song +equally original, but not so easily worded. Among a large troop of +them in April, my attention was attracted to one that was a master +songster,--some Shelley or Tennyson among his kind. The strain was +remarkably prolonged, intricate, and animated, and far surpassed +anything I ever before heard from that source. + +But the most noticeable instance of departure from the standard song +of a species I ever knew of was in the case of a wood thrush. The bird +sang, as did the sparrow, the whole season through, at the foot of my +lot near the river. The song began correctly and ended correctly; but +interjected into it about midway was a loud, piercing, artificial note, +at utter variance with the rest of the strain. When my ear first caught +this singular note, I started out, not a little puzzled, to make, as +I supposed, a new acquaintance, but had not gone far when I discovered +whence it proceeded. Brass amid gold, or pebbles amid pearls, are +not more out of place than was this discordant scream or cry in the +melodious strain of the wood thrush. It pained and startled the ear. It +seemed as if the instrument of the bird was not under control, or else +that one note was sadly out of tune, and, when its turn came, instead of +giving forth one of those sounds that are indeed like pearls, it shocked +the ear with a piercing discord. Yet the singer appeared entirely +unconscious of the defect; or had he grown used to it, or had his +friends persuaded him that it was a variation to be coveted? Sometimes, +after the brood had hatched and the bird's pride was at its full, he +would make a little triumphal tour of the locality, coming from under +the hill quite up to the house, and flaunting his cracked instrument +in the face of whoever would listen. He did not return again the next +season; or, if he did, the malformation of his song was gone. + +I have noticed that the bobolink does not sing the same in different +localities. In New Jersey it has one song; on the Hudson, a slight +variation of the same; and on the high grass-lands of the interior +of the State, quite a different strain,--clearer, more distinctly +articulated, and running off with more sparkle and liltingness. It +reminds one of the clearer mountain air and the translucent spring-water +of those localities. I never could make out what the bobolink says in +New Jersey, but in certain districts in this State his enunciation is +quite distinct. Sometimes he begins with the word _gegue, gegue._ +Then again, more fully, _be true to me, Clarsy, be true to me, Clarsy, +Clarsy,_ thence full tilt into his inimitable song, interspersed in +which the words _kick your slipper, kick your slipper,_ and temperance, +temperance (the last with a peculiar nasal resonance), are plainly +heard. At its best, it is a remarkable performance, a unique +performance, as it contains not the slightest hint or suggestion, either +in tone or manner or effect, of any other bird-song to be heard. The +bobolink has no mate or parallel in any part of the world. He stands +alone. There is no closely allied species. He is not a lark, nor a +finch, nor a warbler, nor a thrush, nor a starling (though classed +with the starlings by late naturalists). He is an exception to many +well-known rules. He is the only ground-bird known to me of marked and +conspicuous plumage. He is the only black and white field-bird we +have east of the Mississippi, and, what is still more odd, he is black +beneath and white above,--the reverse of the fact in all other cases. +Preeminently a bird of the meadow during the breeding season, and +associated with clover and daisies and buttercups as no other bird is, +he yet has the look of an interloper or a newcomer, and not of one to +the manner born. + +The bobolink has an unusually full throat, which may help account for +his great power of song. No bird has yet been found that could imitate +him, or even repeat or suggest a single note, as if his song were the +product of a new set of organs. There is a vibration about it, and a +rapid running over the keys, that is the despair of other songsters. It +is said that the mockingbird is dumb in the presence of the bobolink. +My neighbor has an English skylark that was hatched and reared in +captivity. The bird is a most persistent and vociferous songster, and +fully as successful a mimic as the mockingbird. It pours out a strain +that is a regular mosaic of nearly all the bird-notes to be heard, its +own proper lark song forming a kind of bordering for the whole. The +notes of the phoebe-bird, the purple finch, the swallow, the yellowbird, +the kingbird, the robin, and others, are rendered with perfect +distinctness and accuracy, but not a word of the bobolink's, though the +lark must have heard its song every day for four successive summers. It +was the one conspicuous note in the fields around that the lark made no +attempt to plagiarize. He could not steal the bobolink's thunder. + +The lark is a more marvelous songster than the bobolink only on account +of his soaring flight and the sustained copiousness of his song. His +note is rasping and harsh, in point of melody, when compared with the +bobolink's. When caged and near at hand, the lark's song is positively +disagreeable, it is so loud and full of sharp, aspirated sounds. But +high in air above the broad downs, poured out without interruption for +many minutes together, it is very agreeable. + +The bird among us that is usually called a lark, namely, the meadowlark, +but which our later classifiers say is no lark at all, has nearly the +same quality of voice as the English skylark,--loud, piercing, z-z-ing; +and during the mating season it frequently indulges while on the wing in +a brief song that is quite lark-like. It is also a bird of the stubble, +and one of the last to retreat on the approach of winter. + +The habits of many of our birds are slowly undergoing a change. Their +migrations are less marked. With the settlement and cultivation of the +country, the means of subsistence of nearly every species are vastly +increased. Insects are more numerous, and seeds of weeds and grasses +more abundant. They become more and more domestic, like the English +birds. The swallows have nearly all left their original abodes--hollow +trees, and cliffs, and rocks--for human habitations and their +environments. Where did the barn swallow nest before the country was +settled? The chimney swallow nested in hollow trees, and, perhaps, +occasionally resorts thither yet. But the chimney, notwithstanding the +smoke, seems to suit his taste best. In the spring, before they have +paired, I think these swallows sometimes pass the night in the woods, +but not if an old, disused chimney is handy. + +One evening in early May, my attention was arrested by a band of them +containing several hundreds, perhaps a thousand, circling about near a +large, tall, disused chimney in a secluded place in the country. They +were very lively, and chippering, and diving in a most extraordinary +manner. They formed a broad continuous circle many rods in diameter. +Gradually the circle contracted and neared the chimney. Presently +some of the birds as they came round began to dive toward it, and the +chippering was more animated than ever. Then a few ventured in; in a +moment more, the air at the mouth of the chimney was black with the +stream of descending swallows. When the passage began to get crowded, +the circle lifted and the rest of the birds continued their flight, +giving those inside time to dispose of themselves. Then the influx began +again, and was kept up till the crowd became too great, when it cleared +as before. Thus by installments, or in layers, the swallows were packed +into the chimney until the last one was stowed away. Passing by the +place a few days afterward, I saw a board reaching from the roof of the +building to the top of the chimney, and imagined some curious person or +some predaceous boy had been up to take a peep inside, and see how so +many swallows could dispose of themselves in such a space. It would have +been an interesting spectacle to see them emerge from the chimney in the +morning. + + + + +IV APRIL + +If we represent the winter of our northern climate by a rugged snow-clad +mountain, and summer by a broad fertile plain, then the intermediate +belt, the hilly and breezy uplands, will stand for spring, with March +reaching well up into the region of the snows, and April lapping well +down upon the greening fields and unloosened currents, not beyond +the limits of winter's sallying storms, but well within the vernal +zone,--within the reach of the warm breath and subtle, quickening +influences of the plain below. At its best, April is the tenderest of +tender salads made crisp by ice or snow water. Its type is the first +spear of grass. The senses--sight, hearing, smell--are as hungry for +its delicate and almost spiritual tokens as the cattle are for the first +bite of its fields. How it touches one and makes him both glad and sad! +The voices of the arriving birds, the migrating fowls, the clouds of +pigeons sweeping across the sky or filling the woods, the elfin horn of +the first honey-bee venturing abroad in the middle of the day, the clear +piping of the little frogs in the marshes at sundown, the campfire in +the sugar-bush, the smoke seen afar rising over the trees, the tinge of +green that comes so suddenly on the sunny knolls and slopes, the full +translucent streams, the waxing and warming sun,--how these things and +others like them are noted by the eager eye and ear! April is my natal +month, and I am born again into new delight and new surprises at +each return of it. Its name has an indescribable charm to me. Its two +syllables are like the calls of the first birds,--like that of the +phoebe-bird, or of the meadowlark. Its very snows are fertilizing, and +are called the poor man's manure. + +Then its odors! I am thrilled by its fresh and indescribable odors,--the +perfume of the bursting sod, of the quickened roots and rootlets, of the +mould under the leaves, of the fresh furrows. No other month has odors +like it. The west wind the other day came fraught with a perfume that +was to the sense of smell what a wild and delicate strain of music is to +the ear. It was almost transcendental. I walked across the hill with my +nose in the air taking it in. It lasted for two days. I imagined it came +from the willows of a distant swamp, whose catkins were affording the +bees their first pollen: or did it come from much farther,--from beyond +the horizon, the accumulated breath of innumerable farms and budding +forests? The main characteristic of these April odors is their uncloying +freshness. They are not sweet, they are oftener bitter, they are +penetrating and lyrical. I know well the odors of May and June, of the +world of meadows and orchards bursting into bloom, but they are not so +ineffable and immaterial and so stimulating to the sense as the incense +of April. + +The season of which I speak does not correspond with the April of the +almanac in all sections of our vast geography. It answers to March in +Virginia and Maryland, while in parts of New York and New England it +laps well over into May. It begins when the partridge drums, when the +hyla pipes, when the shad start up the rivers, when the grass greens in +the spring runs, and it ends when the leaves are unfolding and the last +snowflake dissolves in midair. It may be the first of May before the +first swallow appears, before the whip-poor-will is heard, before the +wood thrush sings; but it is April as long as there is snow upon the +mountains, no matter what the almanac may say. Our April is, in fact, +a kind of Alpine summer, full of such contrasts and touches of wild, +delicate beauty as no other season affords. The deluded citizen fancies +there is nothing enjoyable in the country till June, and so misses the +freshest, tenderest part. It is as if one should miss strawberries +and begin his fruit-eating with melons and peaches. These last are +good,--supremely so, they are melting and luscious,--but nothing so +thrills and penetrates the taste, and wakes up and teases the papillae +of the tongue, as the uncloying strawberry. What midsummer sweetness +half so distracting as its brisk sub-acid flavor, and what splendor of +full-leaved June can stir the blood like the best of leafless April? + +One characteristic April feature, and one that delights me very much, +is the perfect emerald of the spring runs while the fields are yet brown +and sere,--strips and patches of the most vivid velvet green on the +slopes and in the valleys. How the eye grazes there, and is filled +and refreshed! I had forgotten what a marked feature this was until I +recently rode in an open wagon for three days through a mountainous, +pastoral country, remarkable for its fine springs. Those delicious +green patches are yet in my eye. The fountains flowed with May. Where no +springs occurred, there were hints and suggestions of springs about +the fields and by the roadside in the freshened grass,--sometimes +overflowing a space in the form of an actual fountain. The water did not +quite get to the surface in such places, but sent its influence. + +The fields of wheat and rye, too, how they stand out of the April +landscape,--great green squares on a field of brown or gray! + +Among April sounds there is none more welcome or suggestive to me than +the voice of the little frogs piping in the marshes. No bird-note +can surpass it as a spring token; and as it is not mentioned, to my +knowledge, by the poets and writers of other lands, I am ready to +believe it is characteristic of our season alone. You may be sure April +has really come when this little amphibian creeps out of the mud and +inflates its throat. We talk of the bird inflating its throat, but you +should see this tiny minstrel inflate _its_ throat, which becomes like a +large bubble, and suggests a drummer-boy with his drum slung very high. +In this drum, or by the aid of it, the sound is produced. Generally the +note is very feeble at first, as if the frost was not yet all out of the +creature's throat, and only one voice will be heard, some prophet bolder +than all the rest, or upon whom the quickening ray of spring has first +fallen. And it often happens that he is stoned for his pains by the yet +unpacified element, and is compelled literally to "shut up" beneath +a fall of snow or a heavy frost. Soon, however, he lifts up his voice +again with more confidence, and is joined by others and still others, +till in due time, say toward the last of the month, there is a shrill +musical uproar, as the sun is setting, in every marsh and bog in the +land. It is a plaintive sound, and I have heard people from the city +speak of it as lonesome and depressing, but to the lover of the country +it is a pure spring melody. The little piper will sometimes climb a +bulrush, to which he clings like a sailor to a mast, and send forth his +shrill call. There is a Southern species, heard when you have reached +the Potomac, whose note is far more harsh and crackling. To stand on the +verge of a swamp vocal with these, pains and stuns the ear. The call +of the Northern species is far more tender and musical. [Footnote: The +Southern species is called the green hyla. I have since heard them in my +neighborhood on the Hudson.] + +Then is there anything like a perfect April morning? One hardly knows +what the sentiment of it is, but it is something very delicious. It is +youth and hope. It is a new earth and a new sky. How the air transmits +sounds, and what an awakening, prophetic character all sounds have! The +distant barking of a dog, or the lowing of a cow, or the crowing of +a cock, seems from out the heart of Nature, and to be a call to come +forth. The great sun appears to have been reburnished, and there is +something in his first glance above the eastern hills, and the way his +eye-beams dart right and left and smite the rugged mountains into gold, +that quickens the pulse and inspires the heart. + +Across the fields in the early morning I hear some of the rare April +birds,--the chewink and the brown thrasher. The robin, the bluebird, the +song sparrow, the phoebe-bird, come in March; but these two ground-birds +are seldom heard till toward the last of April. The ground-birds are all +tree-singers or air-singers; they must have an elevated stage to speak +from. Our long-tailed thrush, or thrasher, like its congeners the +catbird and the mockingbird, delights in a high branch of some solitary +tree, whence it will pour out its rich and intricate warble for an hour +together. This bird is the great American chipper. There is no other +bird that I know of that can chip with such emphasis and military +decision as this yellow-eyed songster. It is like the click of a giant +gunlock. Why is the thrasher so stealthy? It always seems to be going +about on tiptoe. I never knew it to steal anything, and yet it skulks +and hides like a fugitive from justice. One never sees it flying aloft +in the air and traversing the world openly, like most birds, but +it darts along fences and through bushes as if pursued by a guilty +conscience. Only when the musical fit is upon it does it come up into +full view, and invite the world to hear and behold. + +The chewink is a shy bird also, but not stealthy. It is very +inquisitive, and sets up a great scratching among the leaves, apparently +to attract your attention. The male is perhaps the most conspicuously +marked of all the ground-birds except the bobolink, being black above, +bay on the sides, and white beneath. The bay is in compliment to the +leaves he is forever scratching among,--they have rustled against his +breast and sides so long that these parts have taken their color; but +whence come the white and the black? The bird seems to be aware that his +color betrays him, for there are few birds in the woods so careful about +keeping themselves screened from view. When in song, its favorite perch +is the top of some high bush near to cover. On being disturbed at such +times, it pitches down into the brush and is instantly lost to view. + +This is the bird that Thomas Jefferson wrote to Wilson about, greatly +exciting the latter's curiosity. Wilson was just then upon the threshold +of his career as an ornithologist, and had made a drawing of the Canada +jay which he sent to the President. It was a new bird, and in reply +Jefferson called his attention to a "curious bird" which was everywhere +to be heard, but scarcely ever to be seen. He had for twenty years +interested the young sportsmen of his neighborhood to shoot one for him, +but without success. "It is in all the forests, from spring to fall," +he says in his letter, "and never but on the tops of the tallest trees, +from which it perpetually serenades us with some of the sweetest notes, +and as clear as those of the nightingale. I have followed it for miles, +without ever but once getting a good view of it. It is of the size +and make of the mockingbird, lightly thrush-colored on the back, and a +grayish white on the breast and belly. Mr. Randolph, my son-in-law, was +in possession of one which had been shot by a neighbor," etc. Randolph +pronounced it a flycatcher, which was a good way wide of the mark. +Jefferson must have seen only the female, after all his tramp, from his +description of the color; but he was doubtless following his own great +thoughts more than the bird, else he would have had an earlier view. The +bird was not a new one, but was well known then as the ground-robin. The +President put Wilson on the wrong scent by his erroneous description, +and it was a long time before the latter got at the truth of the case. +But Jefferson's letter is a good sample of those which specialists often +receive from intelligent persons who have seen or heard something in +their line very curious or entirely new, and who set the man of science +agog by a description of the supposed novelty,--a description that +generally fits the facts of the case about as well as your coat fits the +chair-back. Strange and curious things in the air, and in the water, and +in the earth beneath, are seen every day except by those who are looking +for them, namely, the naturalists. When Wilson or Audubon gets his eye +on the unknown bird, the illusion vanishes, and your phenomenon turns +out to be one of the commonplaces of the fields or woods. + +A prominent April bird, that one does not have to go to the woods or +away from his own door to see and hear, is the hardy and ever-welcome +meadowlark. What a twang there is about this bird, and what vigor! It +smacks of the soil. It is the winged embodiment of the spirit of our +spring meadows. What emphasis in its _"z-d-t, z-d-t"_ and what character +in its long, piercing note! Its straight, tapering, sharp beak is +typical of its voice. Its note goes like a shaft from a crossbow; it +is a little too sharp and piercing when near at hand, but, heard in the +proper perspective, it is eminently melodious and pleasing. It is one +of the major notes of the fields at this season. In fact, it easily +dominates all others. _"Spring o' the year! spring o' the year!"_ it +says, with a long-drawn breath, a little plaintive, but not complaining +or melancholy. At times it indulges in something much more intricate and +lark-like while hovering on the wing in midair, but a song is beyond the +compass of its instrument, and the attempt usually ends in a breakdown. +A clear, sweet, strong, high-keyed note, uttered from some knoll or +rock, or stake in the fence, is its proper vocal performance. It has the +build and walk and flight of the quail and the grouse. It gets up before +you in much the same manner, and falls an easy prey to the crack shot. +Its yellow breast, surmounted by a black crescent, it need not be +ashamed to turn to the morning sun, while its coat of mottled gray is +in perfect keeping with the stubble amid which it walks. The two lateral +white quills in its tail seem strictly in character. These quills spring +from a dash of scorn and defiance in the bird's make-up. By the aid +of these, it can almost emit a flash as it struts about the fields and +jerks out its sharp notes. They give a rayed, a definite and piquant +expression to its movements. This bird is not properly a lark, but a +starling, say the ornithologists, though it is lark-like in its habits, +being a walker and entirely a ground-bird. Its color also allies it to +the true lark. I believe there is no bird in the English or European +fields that answers to this hardy pedestrian of our meadows. He is a +true American, and his note one of our characteristic April sounds. + +Another marked April note, proceeding sometimes from the meadows, but +more frequently from the rough pastures and borders of the woods, is +the call of the high-hole, or golden-shafted woodpecker. It is quite as +strong as that of the meadowlark, but not so long-drawn and piercing. +It is a succession of short notes rapidly uttered, as if the bird said +_"if-if-if-if-if-if-if."_ The notes of the ordinary downy and hairy +woodpeckers suggest, in some way, the sound of a steel punch; but +that of the high-hole is much softer, and strikes on the ear with real +springtime melody. The high-hole is not so much a wood-pecker as he is +a ground-pecker. He subsists largely on ants and crickets, and does not +appear till they are to be found. + +In Solomon's description of spring, the voice of the turtle is +prominent, but our turtle, or mourning dove, though it arrives in April, +can hardly be said to contribute noticeably to the open-air sounds. +Its call is so vague, and soft, and mournful,--in fact, so remote and +diffused,--that few persons ever hear it at all. + +Such songsters as the cow blackbird are noticeable at this season, +though they take a back seat a little later. It utters a peculiarly +liquid April sound. Indeed, one would think its crop was full of water, +its notes so bubble up and regurgitate, and are delivered with such +an apparent stomachic contraction. This bird is the only feathered +polygamist we have. The females are greatly in excess of the males, and +the latter are usually attended by three or four of the former. As soon +as the other birds begin to build, they are on the _qui vive,_ prowling +about like gypsies, not to steal the young of others, but to steal their +eggs into other birds' nests, and so shirk the labor and responsibility +of hatching and rearing their own young. As these birds do not mate, and +as therefore there can be little or no rivalry or competition between +the males, one wonders--in view of Darwin's teaching--why one sex should +have brighter and richer plumage than the other, which is the fact. The +males are easily distinguished from the dull and faded females by their +deep glossy-black coats. + +The April of English literature corresponds nearly to our May. In Great +Britain, the swallow and the cuckoo usually arrive by the middle of +April; with us, their appearance is a week or two later. Our April, +at its best, is a bright, laughing face under a hood of snow, like the +English March, but presenting sharper contrasts, a greater mixture of +smiles and tears and icy looks than are known to our ancestral climate. +Indeed, Winter sometimes retraces his steps in this month, and unburdens +himself of the snows that the previous cold has kept back; but we are +always sure of a number of radiant, equable days,--days that go before +the bud, when the sun embraces the earth with fervor and determination. +How his beams pour into the woods till the mould under the leaves is +warm and emits an odor! The waters glint and sparkle, the birds gather +in groups, and even those unused to singing find a voice. On the streets +of the cities, what a flutter, what bright looks and gay colors! I +recall one preeminent day of this kind last April. I made a note of it +in my note-book. The earth seemed suddenly to emerge from a wilderness +of clouds and chilliness into one of these blue sunlit spaces. How +the voyagers rejoiced! Invalids came forth, old men sauntered down the +street, stocks went up, and the political outlook brightened. + +Such days bring out the last of the hibernating animals. The woodchuck +unrolls and creeps out of his den to see if his clover has started yet. +The torpidity leaves the snakes and the turtles, and they come forth and +bask in the sun. There is nothing so small, nothing so great, that it +does not respond to these celestial spring days, and give the pendulum +of life a fresh start. + +April is also the month of the new furrow. As soon as the frost is gone +and the ground settled, the plow is started upon the hill, and at each +bout I see its brightened mould-board flash in the sun. Where the last +remnants of the snowdrift lingered yesterday the plow breaks the sod +to-day. Where the drift was deepest the grass is pressed flat, and there +is a deposit of sand and earth blown from the fields to windward. Line +upon line the turf is reversed, until there stands out of the neutral +landscape a ruddy square visible for miles, or until the breasts of the +broad hills glow like the breasts of the robins. + +Then who would not have a garden in April? to rake together the rubbish +and burn it up, to turn over the renewed soil, to scatter the rich +compost, to plant the first seed, or bury the first tuber! It is not the +seed that is planted, any more than it is I that is planted; it is not +the dry stalks and weeds that are burned up, any more than it is my +gloom and regrets that are consumed. An April smoke makes a clean +harvest. + +I think April is the best month to be born in. One is just in time, so +to speak, to catch the first train, which is made up in this month. My +April chickens always turn out best. They get an early start; they have +rugged constitutions. Late chickens cannot stand the heavy dews, or +withstand the predaceous hawks. In April all nature starts with you. You +have not come out of your hibernaculum too early or too late; the time +is ripe, and, if you do not keep pace with the rest, why, the fault is +not in the season. + + + + +V SPRING POEMS + +There is no month oftener on the tongues of the poets than April. It is +the initiative month; it opens the door of the seasons; the interest and +expectations of the untried, the untasted, lurk in it, + + "From you have I been absent in the spring," + +says Shakespeare in one of his sonnets,-- + + "When proud-pied April, dressed in all his trim, + Hath put a spirit of youth in everything, + That heavy Saturn laughed and leaped with him." + +The following poem, from Tennyson's "In Memoriam," might be headed +"April," and serve as descriptive of parts of our season:-- + + "Now fades the last long streak of snow, + Now bourgeons every maze of quick + About the flowering squares, and thick + By ashen roots the violets blow. + + "Now rings the woodland loud and long, + The distance takes a lovelier hue, + And drowned in yonder living blue + The lark becomes a sightless song. + + "Now dance the lights on lawn and lea, + The flocks are whiter down the vale, + And milkier every milky sail + On winding stream or distant sea; + + "Where now the sea-mew pipes, or dives + In yonder greening gleam, and fly + The happy birds, that change their sky + To build and brood; that live their lives + + "From land to land; and in my breast + Spring wakens too; and my regret + Becomes an April violet, + And buds and blossoms like the rest." + +In the same poem the poet asks:-- + + "Can trouble live with April days?" + +Yet they are not all jubilant chords that this season awakens. +Occasionally there is an undertone of vague longing and sadness, akin +to that which one experiences in autumn. Hope for a moment assumes the +attitude of memory and stands with reverted look. The haze, that in +spring as well as in fall sometimes descends and envelops all things, +has in it in some way the sentiment of music, of melody, and awakens +pensive thoughts. Elizabeth Akers, in her "April," has recognized and +fully expressed this feeling. I give the first and last stanzas:-- + + "The strange, sweet days are here again, + The happy-mournful days; + The songs which trembled on our lips + Are half complaint, half praise. + + "Swing, robin, on the budded sprays, + And sing your blithest tune;-- + Help us across these homesick days + Into the joy of June!" + +This poet has also given a touch of spring in her "March," which, +however, should be written "April" in the New England climate:-- + + "The brown buds thicken on the trees, + Unbound, the free streams sing, + As March leads forth across the leas + The wild and windy spring. + + "Where in the fields the melted snow + Leaves hollows warm and wet, + Ere many days will sweetly blow + The first blue violet." + +But on the whole the poets have not been eminently successful in +depicting spring. The humid season, with its tender, melting blue sky, +its fresh, earthy smells, its new furrow, its few simple signs and +awakenings here and there, and its strange feeling of unrest,--how +difficult to put its charms into words! None of the so-called pastoral +poets have succeeded in doing it. That is the best part of spring which +escapes a direct and matter-of-fact description of her. There is more +of spring in a line or two of Chaucer and Spenser than in the elaborate +portraits of her by Thomson or Pope, because the former had spring +in their hearts, and the latter only in their inkhorns. Nearly all +Shakespeare's songs are spring songs,--full of the banter, the frolic, +and the love-making of the early season. What an unloosed current, too, +of joy and fresh new life and appetite in Burns! + +In spring everything has such a margin! there are such spaces of +silence! The influences are at work underground. Our delight is in a few +things. The drying road is enough; a single wild flower, the note of +the first bird, the partridge drumming in the April woods, the restless +herds, the sheep steering for the uplands, the cow lowing in the highway +or hiding her calf in the bushes, the first fires, the smoke going up +through the shining atmosphere, from the burning of rubbish in gardens +and old fields,--each of these simple things fills the breast with +yearning and delight, for they are tokens of the spring. The best spring +poems have this singleness and sparseness. Listen to Solomon: "For lo, +the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear on the +earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the +turtle is heard in the land." In Wordsworth are some things that breathe +the air of spring. These lines, written in early spring, afford a good +specimen:-- + + "I heard a thousand blended notes, + While in a grove I sate reclined, + In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts + Bring sad thoughts to the mind." + + "To her fair works did Nature link + The human soul that through me ran; + And much it grieved my heart to think + What man has made of man. + + "Through primrose tufts, in that green bower, + The periwinkle trailed its wreaths; + And 't is my faith that every flower + Enjoys the air it breathes. + + "The birds around me hopped and played, + Their thoughts I cannot measure: + But the least motion which they made + It seemed a thrill of pleasure." + +Or these from another poem, written in his usual study, "Out-of-Doors," +and addressed to his sister:-- + + "It is the first mild day of March, + Each minute sweeter than before; + The redbreast sings from the tall larch + That stands beside the door. + + "There is a blessing in the air, + Which seems a sense of joy to yield + To the bare trees, and mountains bare, + And grass in the green field. + + . . . . . . . . . + + "Love, now a universal birth, + From heart to heart is stealing, + From earth to man, from man to earth; + It is the hour of feeling. + + "One moment now may give us more + Than years of toiling reason: + Our minds shall drink at every pore + The spirit of the season." + +It is the simplicity of such lines, like the naked branches of the +trees or the unclothed fields, and the spring-like depth of feeling and +suggestion they hold, that make them so appropriate to this season. + +At this season I often find myself repeating these lines of his also:-- + + "My heart leaps up, when I behold + A rainbow in the sky; + So was it, when my life began; + So is it, now I am a man; + So be it, when I shall grow old, + Or let me die!" + +Though there are so few good poems especially commemorative of the +spring, there have no doubt been spring poets,--poets with such newness +and fullness of life, and such quickening power, that the world is +re-created, as it were, beneath their touch. Of course this is in a +measure so with all real poets. But the difference I would indicate may +exist between poets of the same or nearly the same magnitude. Thus, in +this light Tennyson is an autumnal poet, mellow and dead-ripe, and was +so from the first; while Wordsworth has much more of the spring in him, +is nearer the bone of things and to primitive conditions. + +Among the old poems, one which seems to me to have much of the charm +of springtime upon it is the story of Cupid and Psyche in Apuleius. The +songs, gambols, and wooings of the early birds are not more welcome +and suggestive. How graceful and airy, and yet what a tender, profound, +human significance it contains! But the great vernal poem, doubly so in +that it is the expression of the springtime of the race, the boyhood of +man as well, is the Iliad of Homer. What faith, what simple wonder, +what unconscious strength, what beautiful savagery, what magnanimous +enmity,--a very paradise of war! + +Though so young a people, there is not much of the feeling of spring +in any of our books. The muse of our poets is wise rather than joyous. +There is no excess or extravagance or unruliness in her. There are +spring sounds and tokens in Emerson's "May-Day:"-- + + "April cold with dropping rain + Willows and lilacs brings again, + The whistle of returning birds, + And trumpet-lowing of the herds. + The scarlet maple-keys betray + What potent blood hath modest May, + What fiery force the earth renews, + The wealth of forms, the flush of hues; + What joy in rosy waves outpoured + Flows from the heart of Love, the Lord." + +But this is not spring in the blood. Among the works of our young +and rising poets, I am not certain but that Mr. Gilder's "New Day" is +entitled to rank as a spring poem in the sense in which I am speaking. +It is full of gayety and daring, and full of the reckless abandon of +the male bird when he is winning his mate. It is full also of the +tantalizing suggestiveness, the half-lights and shades, of April and +May. + +Of prose poets who have the charm of the springtime upon them, the best +recent example I know of is Bjoernson, the Norwegian romancist. What +especially makes his books spring-like is their freshness and sweet good +faith. There is also a reticence and an unwrought suggestiveness about +them that is like the promise of buds and early flowers. Of Turgenieff, +the Russian, much the same thing might be said. His stories are simple +and elementary, and have none of the elaborate hair-splitting and forced +hot-house character of the current English or American novel. They +spring from stronger, more healthful and manly conditions, and have a +force in them that is like a rising, incoming tide. + + + + +VI OUR RURAL DIVINITY + +I wonder that Wilson Flagg did not include the cow among his +"Picturesque Animals," for that is where she belongs. She has not the +classic beauty of the horse, but in picture-making qualities she is far +ahead of him. Her shaggy, loose-jointed body; her irregular, sketchy +outlines, like those of the landscape,--the hollows and ridges, the +slopes and prominences; her tossing horns, her bushy tail, tier swinging +gait, her tranquil, ruminating habits,--all tend to make her an object +upon which the artist eye loves to dwell. The artists are forever +putting her into pictures, too. In rural landscape scenes she is +an important feature. Behold her grazing in the pastures and on the +hillsides, or along banks of streams, or ruminating under wide-spreading +trees, or standing belly-deep in the creek or pond, or lying upon the +smooth places in the quiet summer afternoon, the day's grazing done, +and waiting to be summoned home to be milked; and again in the twilight +lying upon the level summit of the hill, or where the sward is thickest +and softest; or in winter a herd of them filing along toward the spring +to drink, or being "foddered" from the stack in the field upon the new +snow,--surely the cow is a picturesque animal, and all her goings and +comings are pleasant to behold. + +I looked into Hamerton's clever book on the domestic animals also, +expecting to find my divinity duly celebrated, but he passes her by and +contemplates the bovine qualities only as they appear in the ox and the +bull. + +Neither have the poets made much of the cow, but have rather dwelt +upon the steer, or the ox yoked to the plow. I recall this touch from +Emerson:-- + + "The heifer that lows in the upland farm, + Far heard, lows not thine ear to charm." + +But the ear is charmed, nevertheless, especially if it be not too near, +and the air be still and dense, or hollow, as the farmer says. And +again, if it be springtime and she task that powerful bellows of hers +to its utmost capacity, how round the sound is, and how far it goes over +the hills! + +The cow has at least four tones or lows. First, there is her alarmed +or distressed low when deprived of her calf, or when separated from +her mates,--her low of affection. Then there is her call of hunger, a +petition for food, sometimes full of impatience, or her answer to the +farmer's call, full of eagerness. Then there is that peculiar frenzied +bawl she utters on smelling blood, which causes every member of the herd +to lift its head and hasten to the spot,--the native cry of the clan. +When she is gored or in great danger she bawls also, but that is +different. And lastly, there is the long, sonorous volley she lets off +on the hills or in the yard, or along the highway, and which seems to +be expressive of a kind of unrest and vague longing,--the longing of the +imprisoned Io for her lost identity. She sends her voice forth so that +every god on Mount Olympus can hear her plaint. She makes this sound in +the morning, especially in the spring, as she goes forth to graze. + +One of our rural poets, Myron Benton, whose verse often has the flavor +of sweet cream, has written some lines called "Rumination," in which the +cow is the principal figure, and with which I am permitted to adorn my +theme. The poet first gives his attention to a little brook that "breaks +its shallow gossip" at his feet and "drowns the oriole's voice:"-- + + "But moveth not that wise and ancient cow, + Who chews her juicy cud so languid now + Beneath her favorite elm, whose drooping bough + Lulls all but inward vision fast asleep: + But still, her tireless tail a pendulum sweep + Mysterious clock-work guides, and some hid pulley + Her drowsy cud, each moment, raises duly. + + "Of this great, wondrous world she has seen more + Than you, my little brook, and cropped its store + Of succulent grass on many a mead and lawn; + And strayed to distant uplands in the dawn. + And she has had some dark experience + Of graceless man's ingratitude; and hence + Her ways have not been ways of pleasantness, + Nor all her paths of peace. But her distress + And grief she has lived past; your giddy round + Disturbs her not, for she is learned profound + In deep brahminical philosophy. + She chews the cud of sweetest revery + Above your worldly prattle, brooklet merry, + Oblivious of all things sublunary." + +The cow figures in Grecian mythology, and in the Oriental literature is +treated as a sacred animal. "The clouds are cows and the rain milk." I +remember what Herodotus says of the Egyptians' worship of heifers and +steers; and in the traditions of the Celtic nations the cow is regarded +as a divinity. In Norse mythology the milk of the cow Andhumbla afforded +nourishment to the Frost giants, and it was she that licked into being +and into shape a god, the father of Odin. If anything could lick a god +into shape, certainly the cow could do it. You may see her perform this +office for young Taurus any spring. She licks him out of the fogs and +bewilderments and uncertainties in which he finds himself on first +landing upon these shores, and up onto his feet in an incredibly short +time. Indeed, that potent tongue of hers can almost make the dead alive +any day, and the creative lick of the old Scandinavian mother cow is +only a large-lettered rendering of the commonest facts. + +The horse belongs to the fiery god Mars. He favors war, and is one of +its oldest, most available, and most formidable engines. The steed is +clothed with thunder, and smells the battle from afar; but the cattle +upon a thousand hills denote that peace and plenty bear sway in the +land. The neighing of the horse is a call to battle; but the lowing of +old Brockleface in the valley brings the golden age again. The savage +tribes are never without the horse; the Scythians are all mounted; but +the cow would tame and humanize them. When the Indians will cultivate +the cow, I shall think their civilization fairly begun. Recently, when +the horses were sick with the epizooetic, and the oxen came to the city +and helped to do their work, what an Arcadian air again filled the +streets! But the dear old oxen,--how awkward and distressed they looked! +Juno wept in the face of every one of them. The horse is a true citizen, +and is entirely at home in the paved streets; but the ox,--what a +complete embodiment of all rustic and rural things! Slow, deliberate, +thick-skinned, powerful, hulky, ruminating, fragrant-breathed, when he +came to town the spirit and suggestion of all Georgics and Bucolics came +with him. O citizen, was it only a plodding, unsightly brute that went +by? Was there no chord in your bosom, long silent, that sweetly vibrated +at the sight of that patient, Herculean couple? Did you smell no hay or +cropped herbage, see no summer pastures with circles of cool shade, hear +no voice of herds among the hills? They were very likely the only horses +your grandfather ever had. Not much trouble to harness and unharness +them. Not much vanity on the road in those days. They did all the work +on the early pioneer farm. They were the gods whose rude strength first +broke the soil. They could live where the moose and the deer could. If +there was no clover or timothy to be had, then the twigs of the basswood +and birch would do. Before there were yet fields given up to grass, they +found ample pasturage in the woods. Their wide-spreading horns gleamed +in the duskiness, and their paths and the paths of the cows became the +future roads and highways, or even the streets of great cities. + +All the descendants of Odin show a bovine trace, and cherish and +cultivate the cow. In Norway she is a great feature. Professor Boyesen +describes what he calls the _saeter_, the spring migration of the dairy +and dairymaids, with all the appurtenances of butter and cheese making, +from the valleys to the distant plains upon the mountains, where the +grass keeps fresh and tender till fall. It is the great event of the +year in all the rural districts. Nearly the whole family go with the +cattle and remain with them. At evening the cows are summoned home with +a long horn, called the _loor,_ in the hands of the milkmaid. The +whole herd comes winding down the mountain-side toward the _saeter_ in +obedience to the mellow blast. + +What were those old Vikings but thick-hided bulls that delighted +in nothing so much as goring each other? And has not the charge of +beefiness been brought much nearer home to us than that? But about all +the northern races there is something that is kindred to cattle in the +best sense,--something in their art and literature that is essentially +pastoral, sweet-breathed, continent, dispassionate, ruminating, +wide-eyed, soft-voiced,--a charm of kine, the virtue of brutes. + +The cow belongs more especially to the northern peoples, to the region +of the good, green grass. She is the true _grazing_ animal. That broad, +smooth, always dewy nose of hers is just the suggestion of greensward. +She caresses the grass; she sweeps off the ends of the leaves; she reaps +it with the soft sickle of her tongue. She crops close, but she does +not bruise or devour the turf like the horse. She is the sward's best +friend, and will make it thick and smooth as a carpet. + + "The turfy mountains where live the nibbling sheep" + +are not for her. Her muzzle is too blunt; then she does not _bite_ as do +the sheep; she has no upper teeth; she _crops._ But on the lower slopes, +and margins, and rich bottoms, she is at home. Where the daisy and the +buttercup and clover bloom, and where corn will grow, is her proper +domain. The agriculture of no country can long thrive without her. Not +only a large part of the real, but much of the potential, wealth of the +land is wrapped up in her. + +Then the cow has given us some good words and hints. How could we get +along without the parable of the cow that gave a good pail of milk and +then kicked it over? One could hardly keep house without it. Or the +parable of the cream and the skimmed milk, or of the buttered bread? We +know, too, through her aid, what the horns of the dilemma mean, and what +comfort there is in the juicy cud of reverie. + +I have said the cow has not been of much service to the poets, and yet +I remember that Jean Ingelow could hardly have managed her "High Tide" +without "Whitefoot" and "Lightfoot" and "Cusha! Cusha! Cusha! calling;" +or Trowbridge his "Evening at the Farm," in which the real call of the +American farm-boy of "Co', boss! Co', boss! Co', Co'," makes a very +musical refrain. + +Tennyson's charming "Milking Song" is another flower of poesy that has +sprung up in my divinity's footsteps. + +What a variety of individualities a herd of cows presents when you have +come to know them all, not only in form and color, but in manners and +disposition! Some are timid and awkward, and the butt of the whole +herd. Some remind you of deer. Some have an expression in the face +like certain persons you have known. A petted and well-fed cow has a +benevolent and gracious look; an ill-used and poorly fed one, a pitiful +and forlorn look. Some cows have a masculine or ox expression; others +are extremely feminine. The latter are the ones for milk. Some cows +will kick like a horse; some jump fences like deer. Every herd has its +ringleader, its unruly spirit,--one that plans all the mischief, and +leads the rest through the fences into the grain or into the orchard. +This one is usually quite different from the master spirit, the "boss of +the yard." The latter is generally the most peaceful and law-abiding cow +in the lot, and the least bullying and quarrelsome. But she is not to be +trifled with; her will is law; the whole herd give way before her, those +that have crossed horns with her and those that have not, but yielded +their allegiance without crossing. I remember such a one among my +father's milkers when I was a boy,--a slender-horned, deep-shouldered, +large-uddered, dewlapped old cow that we always put first in the long +stable, so she could not have a cow on each side of her to forage upon; +for the master is yielded to no less in the stanchions than in the +yard. She always had the first place anywhere. She had her choice of +standing-room in the milking-yard, and when she wanted to lie down there +or in the fields the best and softest spot was hers. When the herd were +foddered from the stack or barn, or fed with pumpkins in the fall, she +was always first served. Her demeanor was quiet but impressive. She +never bullied or gored her mates, but literally ruled them with the +breath of her nostrils. If any new-comer or ambitious younger cow, +however, chafed under her supremacy, she was ever ready to make good her +claims. And with what spirit she would fight when openly challenged! +She was a whirlwind of pluck and valor; and not after one defeat or two +defeats would she yield the championship. The boss cow, when overcome, +seems to brood over her disgrace, and day after day will meet her rival +in fierce combat. + +A friend of mine, a pastoral philosopher, whom I have consulted in +regard to the master cow, thinks it is seldom the case that one rules +all the herd, if it number many, but that there is often one that will +rule nearly all. "Curiously enough," he says, "a case like this will +often occur: No. 1 will whip No. 2; No. 2 whips No. 3; and No. 3 whips +No. 1; so around in a circle. This is not a mistake; it is often the +case. I remember," he continued, "we once had feeding out of a large +bin in the centre of the yard six cows who mastered right through in +succession from No. 1 to No. 6; _but_ No. 6 _paid off the score by +whipping No. 1._ I often watched them when they were all trying to feed +out of the box, and of course trying, dog-in-the-manger fashion, each to +prevent any other she could. They would often get in the order to do it +very systematically, since they could keep rotating about the box +till the chain happened to get broken somewhere, when there would be +confusion. Their mastership, you know, like that between nations, is +constantly changing. There are always Napoleons who hold their own +through many vicissitudes; but the ordinary cow is continually liable to +lose her foothold. Some cow she has always despised, and has often sent +tossing across the yard at her horns' ends, some pleasant morning will +return the compliment and pay off old scores." + +But my own observation has been that, in herds in which there have +been no important changes for several years, the question of might gets +pretty well settled, and some one cow becomes the acknowledged ruler. + +The bully of the yard is never the master, but usually a second or third +rate pusher that never loses an opportunity to hook those beneath her, +or to gore the masters if she can get them in a tight place. If such a +one can get loose in the stable, she is quite certain to do mischief. +She delights to pause in the open bars and turn and keep those behind +her at bay till she sees a pair of threatening horns pressing toward +her, when she quickly passes on. As one cow masters all, so there is one +cow that is mastered by all. These are the two extremes of the herd, the +head and the tail. Between them are all grades of authority, with none +so poor but hath some poorer to do her reverence. + +The cow has evidently come down to us from a wild or semi-wild state; +perhaps is a descendant of those wild, shaggy cattle of which a small +band is still preserved in some nobleman's park in Scotland. Cuvier +seems to have been of this opinion. One of the ways in which her wild +instincts still crop out is the disposition she shows in spring to hide +her calf,--a common practice among the wild herds. Her wild nature would +be likely to come to the surface at this crisis if ever; and I have +known cows that practiced great secrecy in dropping their calves. As +their time approached, they grew restless, a wild and excited look was +upon them; and if left free, they generally set out for the woods, or +for some other secluded spot. After the calf is several hours old, +and has got upon its feet and had its first meal, the dam by some sign +commands it to lie down and remain quiet while she goes forth to feed. +If the calf is approached at such time, it plays "possum," pretends +to be dead or asleep, till, on finding this ruse does not succeed, it +mounts to its feet, bleats loudly and fiercely, and charges desperately +upon the intruder. But it recovers from this wild scare in a little +while, and never shows signs of it again. + +The habit of the cow, also, in eating the placenta, looks to me like a +vestige of her former wild instincts,--the instinct to remove everything +that would give the wild beasts a clew or a scent, and so attract them +to her helpless young. + +How wise and sagacious the cows become that run upon the street, or pick +their living along the highway! The mystery of gates and bars is at last +solved to them. They ponder over them by night, they lurk about them by +day, till they acquire a new sense,--till they become _en rapport_ with +them and know when they are open and unguarded. The garden gate, if it +open into the highway at any point, is never out of the mind of these +roadsters, or out of their calculations. They calculate upon the chances +of its being left open a certain number of times in the season; and if +it be but once, and only for five minutes, your cabbage and sweet corn +suffer. What villager, or countryman either, has not been awakened at +night by the squeaking and crunching of those piratical jaws under the +window, or in the direction of the vegetable patch? I have had the cows, +after they had eaten up my garden, break into the stable where my own +milcher was tied, and gore her and devour her meal. Yes, life presents +but one absorbing problem to the street cow, and that is how to get into +your garden. She catches glimpses of it over the fence or through the +pickets, and her imagination or her epigastrium is inflamed. When +the spot is surrounded by a high board fence, I think I have seen her +peeping at the cabbages through a knothole. At last she learns to open +the gate. It is a great triumph of bovine wit. She does it with her horn +or her nose, or may be with her ever-ready tongue. I doubt if she has +ever yet penetrated the mystery of the newer patent fastenings; but the +old-fashioned thumb-latch she can see through, give her time enough. + +A large, lank, muley or polled cow used to annoy me in this way when I +was a dweller in a certain pastoral city. I more than half suspected she +was turned in by some one; so one day I watched. Presently I heard the +gate-latch rattle; the gate swung open, and in walked the old buffalo. +On seeing me she turned and ran like a horse. I then fastened the gate +on the inside and watched again. After long waiting the old cow came +quickly round the corner and approached the gate. She lifted the latch +with her nose. Then, as the gate did not move, she lifted it again and +again. Then she gently nudged it. Then, the obtuse gate not taking +the hint, she butted it gently, then harder and still harder, till it +rattled again. At this juncture I emerged from my hiding-place, when +the old villain scampered off with great precipitation. She knew she +was trespassing, and she had learned that there were usually some swift +penalties attached to this pastime. + +I have owned but three cows and loved but one. That was the first one, +Chloe, a bright red, curly-pated, golden-skinned Devonshire cow, that an +ocean steamer landed for me upon the banks of the Potomac one bright May +Day many clover summers ago. She came from the north, from the pastoral +regions of the Catskills, to graze upon the broad commons of the +national capital. I was then the fortunate and happy lessee of an old +place with an acre of ground attached, almost within the shadow of the +dome of the Capitol. Behind a high but aged and decrepit board fence I +indulged my rural and unclerical tastes. I could look up from my homely +tasks and cast a potato almost in the midst of that cataract of marble +steps that flows out of the north wing of the patriotic pile. Ah! when +that creaking and sagging back gate closed behind me in the evening, I +was happy; and when it opened for my egress thence in the morning, I was +not happy. Inside that gate was a miniature farm, redolent of homely, +primitive life, a tumble-down house and stables and implements of +agriculture and horticulture, broods of chickens, and growing pumpkins, +and a thousand antidotes to the weariness of an artificial life. +Outside of it were the marble and iron palaces, the paved and blistering +streets, and the high, vacant mahogany desk of a government clerk. +In that ancient inclosure I took an earth bath twice a day. I planted +myself as deep in the soil as I could, to restore the normal tone and +freshness of my system, impaired by the above-mentioned government +mahogany. I have found there is nothing like the earth to draw the +various social distempers out of one. The blue devils take flight at +once if they see you mean to bury them and make compost of them. Emerson +intimates that the scholar had better not try to have two gardens; but +I could never spend an hour hoeing up dock and red-root and twitch-grass +without in some way getting rid of many weeds and fungi, unwholesome +growths, that a petty indoor life is forever fostering in my moral and +intellectual nature. + +But the finishing touch was not given till Chloe came. She was the jewel +for which this homely setting waited. My agriculture had some object +then. The old gate never opened with such alacrity as when she paused +before it. How we waited for her coming! Should I send Drewer, the +colored patriarch, for her? No; the master of the house himself should +receive Juno at the capital. + +"One cask for you," said the clerk, referring to the steamer bill of +lading. + +"Then I hope it's a cask of milk," I said. "I expected a cow." + +"One cask, it says here." + +"Well, let's see it; I'll warrant it has horns and is tied by a rope;" +which proved to be the case, for there stood the only object that bore +my name, chewing its cud, on the forward deck. How she liked the voyage +I could not find out; but she seemed to relish so much the feeling of +solid ground beneath her feet once more, that she led me a lively step +all the way home. She cut capers in front of the White House, and tried +twice to wind me up in the rope as we passed the Treasury. She kicked up +her heels on the broad avenue, and became very coltish as she came under +the walls of the Capitol. But that night the long-vacant stall in the +old stable was filled, and the next morning the coffee had met with a +change of heart. I had to go out twice with the lantern and survey my +treasure before I went to bed. Did she not come from the delectable +mountains, and did I not have a sort of filial regard for her as toward +my foster-mother? + +This was during the Arcadian age at the capital, before the easy-going +Southern ways had gone out and the prim new Northern ways had come +in, and when the domestic animals were treated with distinguished +consideration and granted the freedom of the city. There was a charm of +cattle in the street and upon the commons; goats cropped your rosebushes +through the pickets, and nooned upon your front porch; and pigs dreamed +Arcadian dreams under your garden fence, or languidly frescoed it with +pigments from the nearest pool. It was a time of peace; it was the poor +man's golden age. Your cow, your goat, your pig, led vagrant, wandering +lives, and picked up a subsistence wherever they could, like the bees, +which was almost everywhere. Your cow went forth in the morning and came +home fraught with milk at night, and you never troubled yourself where +she went or how far she roamed. + +Chloe took very naturally to this kind of life. At first I had to go +with her a few times and pilot her to the nearest commons, and then I +left her to her own wit, which never failed her. What adventures she +had, what acquaintances she made, how far she wandered, I never knew. +I never came across her in my walks or rambles. Indeed, on several +occasions I thought I would look her up and see her feeding in national +pastures, but I never could find her. There were plenty of cows, but +they were all strangers. But punctually, between four and five o'clock +in the afternoon, her white horns would be seen tossing above the gate +and her impatient low be heard. Sometimes, when I turned her forth in +the morning, she would pause and apparently consider which way she would +go. Should she go toward Kendall Green to-day, or follow the Tiber, +or over by the Big Spring, or out around Lincoln Hospital? She seldom +reached a conclusion till she had stretched forth her neck and blown a +blast on her trumpet that awoke the echoes in the very lantern on the +dome of the Capitol. Then, after one or two licks, she would disappear +around the corner. Later in the season, when the grass was parched or +poor on the commons, and the corn and cabbage tempting in the garden, +Chloe was loath to depart in the morning, and her deliberations were +longer than ever, and very often I had to aid her in coming to a +decision. + +For two summers she was a wellspring of pleasure and profit in my farm +of one acre, when, in an evil moment, I resolved to part with her and +try another. In an evil moment I say, for from that time my luck in +cattle left me. The goddess never forgave me the execution of that rash +and cruel resolve. + +The day is indelibly stamped on my memory when I exposed my Chloe for +sale in the public market-place. It was in November, a bright, dreamy, +Indian summer day. A sadness oppressed me, not unmixed with guilt and +remorse. An old Irish woman came to the market also with her pets to +sell, a sow and five pigs, and took up a position next me. We condoled +with each other; we bewailed the fate of our darlings together; we +berated in chorus the white-aproned but blood-stained fraternity who +prowled about us. When she went away for a moment I minded the pigs, and +when I strolled about she minded my cow. How shy the innocent beast was +of those carnal marketmen! How she would shrink away from them! When +they put out a hand to feel her condition she would "scrooch" down her +back, or bend this way or that, as if the hand were a branding-iron. So +long as I stood by her head she felt safe--deluded creature!--and chewed +the cud of sweet content; but the moment I left her side she seemed +filled with apprehension, and followed me with her eyes, lowing softly +and entreatingly till I returned. + +At last the money was counted out for her, and her rope surrendered to +the hand of another. How that last look of alarm and incredulity, which +I caught as I turned for a parting glance, went to my heart! + +Her stall was soon filled, or partly filled, and this time with a +native,--a specimen of what may be called the cornstalk breed of +Virginia; a slender, furtive, long-geared heifer just verging on +cowhood, that in spite of my best efforts would wear a pinched and +hungry look. She evidently inherited a humped back. It was a family +trait, and evidence of the purity of her blood. For the native blooded +cow of Virginia, from shivering over half rations of cornstalks in the +open air during those bleak and windy winters, and roaming over those +parched fields in summer, has come to have some marked features. For +one thing, her pedal extremities seem lengthened; for another, her +udder does not impede her traveling; for a third, her backbone inclines +strongly to the curve; then, she despiseth hay. This last is a sure +test. Offer a thorough-bred Virginia cow hay, and she will laugh in +your face; but rattle the husks or shucks, and she knows you to be her +friend. + +The new-comer even declined corn-meal at first. She eyed it furtively, +then sniffed it suspiciously, but finally discovered that it bore some +relation to her native "shucks," when she fell to eagerly. + +I cherish the memory of this cow, however, as the most affectionate +brute I ever knew. Being deprived of her calf, she transferred her +affections to her master, and would fain have made a calf of him, lowing +in the most piteous and inconsolable manner when he was out of her +sight, hardly forgetting her grief long enough to eat her meal, and +entirely neglecting her beloved husks. Often in the middle of the night +she would set up that sonorous lamentation, and continue it till sleep +was chased from every eye in the household. This generally had the +effect of bringing the object of her affection before her, but in a mood +anything but filial or comforting. Still, at such times a kick seemed +a comfort to her, and she would gladly have kissed the rod that was the +instrument of my midnight wrath. + +But her tender star was destined soon to a fatal eclipse. Being tied +with too long a rope on one occasion during my temporary absence, she +got her head into the meal-barrel, and stopped not till she had devoured +nearly half a bushel of dry meal. The singularly placid and benevolent +look that beamed from the meal-besmeared face when I discovered her was +something to be remembered. For the first time, also, her spinal column +came near assuming a horizontal line. But the grist proved too much +for her frail mill, and her demise took place on the third day, not of +course without some attempt to relieve her on my part. I gave her, as is +usual in such emergencies, everything I "could think of," and everything +my neighbors could think of, besides some fearful prescriptions which I +obtained from a German veterinary surgeon, but to no purpose. I imagined +her poor maw distended and inflamed with the baking sodden mass which no +physic could penetrate or enliven. + +Thus ended my second venture in live-stock. My third, which followed +sharp upon the heels of this disaster, was scarcely more of a success. +This time I led to the altar a buffalo cow, as they call the "muley" +down South,--a large, spotted, creamy-skinned cow, with a fine udder, +that I persuaded a Jew drover to part with for ninety dollars. "Pag like +a dish rack (rag)," said he, pointing to her udder after she had been +milked. "You vill come pack and gif me the udder ten tollar" (for he +had demanded an even hundred), he continued, "after you have had her a +gouple of days." True, I felt like returning to him after a "gouple of +days," but not to pay the other ten dollars. The cow proved to be as +blind as a bat, though capable of counterfeiting the act of seeing to +perfection. For did she not lift up her head and follow with her eyes a +dog that scaled the fence and ran through the other end of the lot, +and the next moment dash my hopes thus raised by trying to walk over +a locust-tree thirty feet high? And when I set the bucket before her +containing her first mess of meal, she missed it by several inches, and +her nose brought up against the ground. Was it a kind of far-sightedness +and near blindness? That was it, I think; she had genius, but not +talent; she could see the man in the moon, but was quite oblivious to +the man immediately in her front. Her eyes were telescopic and required +a long range. + +As long as I kept her in the stall, or confined to the inclosure, this +strange eclipse of her sight was of little consequence. But when spring +came, and it was time for her to go forth and seek her livelihood in the +city's waste places, I was embarrassed. Into what remote corners or into +what _terra incognita_ might she not wander! There was little doubt but +that she would drift around home in the course of the summer, or perhaps +as often as every week or two; but could she be trusted to find her way +back every night? Perhaps she could be taught. Perhaps her other senses +were acute enough to compensate in a measure for her defective vision. +So I gave her lessons in the topography of the country. I led her forth +to graze for a few hours each day and led her home again. Then I left +her to come home alone, which feat she accomplished very encouragingly. +She came feeling her way along, stepping very high, but apparently a +most diligent and interested sight-seer. But she was not sure of the +right house when she got to it, though she stared at it very hard. + +Again I turned her forth, and again she came back, her telescopic eyes +apparently of some service to her. On the third day, there was a fierce +thunder-storm late in the afternoon, and old buffalo did not come home. +It had evidently scattered and bewildered what little wits she had. +Being barely able to navigate those streets on a calm day, what could +she be expected to do in a tempest? + +After the storm had passed, and near sundown, I set out in quest of +her, but could get no clew. I heard that two cows had been struck by +lightning about a mile out on the commons. My conscience instantly told +me that one of them was mine. It would be a fit closing of the third act +of this pastoral drama. Thitherward I bent my steps, and there upon the +smooth plain I beheld the scorched and swollen forms of two cows slain +by thunderbolts, but neither of them had ever been mine. + +The next day I continued the search, and the next, and the next. Finally +I hoisted an umbrella over my head, for the weather had become hot, and +set out deliberately and systematically to explore every foot of open +common on Capitol Hill. I tramped many miles, and found every man's cow +but my own,--some twelve or fifteen hundred, I should think. I saw many +vagrant boys and Irish and colored women, nearly all of whom had seen a +buffalo cow that very day that answered exactly to my description, but +in such diverse and widely separate places that I knew it was no cow of +mine. And it was astonishing how many times I was myself deceived; how +many rumps or heads, or line backs or white flanks, I saw peeping over +knolls, or from behind fences or other objects, that could belong to no +cow but mine! + +Finally I gave up the search, concluded the cow had been stolen, and +advertised her, offering a reward. But days passed, and no tidings were +obtained. Hope began to burn pretty low,--was indeed on the point of +going out altogether,--when one afternoon, as I was strolling over the +commons (for in my walks I still hovered about the scenes of my lost +milcher), I saw the rump of a cow, over a grassy knoll, that looked +familiar. Coming nearer, the beast lifted up her head; and, behold! it +was she! only a few squares from home, where doubtless she had been most +of the time. I had overshot the mark in my search. I had ransacked the +far-off, and had neglected the near-at-hand, as we are so apt to do. But +she was ruined as a milcher, and her history thenceforward was brief and +touching! + + + + +VII BEFORE GENIUS + +If there did not something else go to the making of literature besides +mere literary parts, even the best of them, how long ago the old bards +and the Biblical writers would have been superseded by the learned +professors and the gentlemanly versifiers of later times! Is there +to-day a popular poet, using the English language, who does not, in +technical acquirements and in the artificial adjuncts of poetry,--rhyme, +metre, melody, and especially sweet, dainty fancies,--surpass Europe's +and Asia's loftiest and oldest? Indeed, so marked is the success of the +latter-day poets in this respect, that any ordinary reader may well be +puzzled, and ask, if the shaggy antique masters are poets, what are the +refined and euphonious producers of our own day? + +If we were to inquire what this something else is which is prerequisite +to any deep and lasting success in literature, we should undoubtedly +find that it is the man behind the book. It is the fashion of the day +to attribute all splendid results to genius and culture. But genius and +culture are not enough. "All other knowledge is hurtful to him who has +not the science of honesty and goodness," says Montaigne. The quality +of simple manhood, and the universal human traits which form the bond +of union between man and man,--which form the basis of society, of the +family, of government, of friendship,--are quite overlooked; and the credit +is given to some special facility, or to brilliant and lucky hit. Does +any one doubt that the great poets and artists are made up mainly of the +most common universal human and heroic characteristics?--that in them, +though working to other ends, is all that construct the soldier, the +sailor, the farmer, the discoverer, the bringer-to-pass in any field, +and that their work is good and enduring in proportion as it is +saturated and fertilized by the qualities of these? Good human stock is +the main dependence. No great poet ever appeared except from a race of +good fighters, good eaters, good sleepers, good breeders. Literature +dies with the decay of the _un-_literary element. It is not in the +spirit of something far away in the clouds or under the moon, something +ethereal, visionary, and anti-mundane, that Angelo, Dante, and +Shakespeare work, but in the spirit of common Nature and of the +homeliest facts; through these, and not away from them, the path of the +creator lies. + +It is no doubt this tendency, always more or less marked in highly +refined and cultivated times, to forget or overlook the primary +basic qualities, and to parade and make much of verbal and technical +acquirements, that led Huxley to speak with such bitter scorn of the +"sensual caterwauling of the literary classes," for this is not the +only country in which books are produced that are a mere skin of elegant +words blown up by copious literary gas. + +In imaginative works, especially, much depends upon the quality of +mere weight. A stern, material inertia is indispensable. It is like +the immobility and the power of resistance of a piece of ordnance, upon +which the force and efficacy of the projectile finally depend. In +the most daring flights of the master, there is still something which +remains indifferent and uncommitted, and which acts as reserve power, +making the man always superior to his work. He must always leave the +impression that if he wanted to pull harder or to fly higher he could +easily do so. In Homer there is much that is not directly available +for Homer's purposes as poet. This is his personality,--the real +Homer,--which lies deeper than his talents and skill, and which works +through these by indirections. This gives the authority; this is the +unseen backer, which makes every promise good. + +What depths can a man sound but his own, or what heights explore? "We +carry within us," says Sir Thomas Browne, "the wonders we seek without +us." + +Indeed, there is a strict moral or ethical dependence of the capacity +to conceive or to project great things upon the capacity to be or to +do them. It is as true as any law of hydraulics or of statics, that the +workmanship of a man can never rise above the level of his character. +He can never adequately say or do anything greater than he himself is. +There is no such thing, for instance, as deep insight into the mystery +of Creation, without integrity and simplicity of character. + +In the highest mental results and conditions the whole being +sympathizes. The perception of a certain range of truth, such as is +indicated by Plato, Hegel, Swedenborg, and which is very far from +what is called "religious" or "moral," I should regard as the best +testimonial that could be offered of a man's probity and essential +nobility of soul. Is it possible to imagine a fickle, inconstant, or a +sly, vain, mean person reading and appreciating Emerson? Think of the +real men of science, the great geologists and astronomers, one opening +up time, the other space! Shall mere intellectual acumen be accredited +with these immense results? What noble pride, self-reliance, and +continuity of character underlie Newton's deductions! + +Only those books are for the making of men into which a man has gone in +the making. Mere professional skill and sleight of hand, of themselves, +are to be apprized as lightly in letters as in war or in government, +or in any kind of leadership. Strong native qualities only avail in the +long run; and the more these dominate over the artificial endowments, +sloughing or dropping the latter in the final result, the more we are +refreshed and enlarged. Who has not, at some period of his life, been +captivated by the rhetoric and fine style of nearly all the popular +authors of a certain sort, but at last waked up to discover that behind +these brilliant names was no strong, loving man, but only a refined +taste, a fertile invention, or a special talent of one kind or another. + +Think of the lather of the modern novel, and the fashion-plate men and +women that figure in it! What noble person has Dickens sketched, or +has any novelist since Scott? The utter poverty of almost every current +novelist, in any grand universal human traits in his own character, is +shown in nothing more clearly than in the _kind_ of interest the reader +takes in his books. We are led along solely by the ingenuity of the +plot, and a silly desire to see how the affair came out. What must be +the effect, long continued, of this class of jugglers working upon the +sympathies and the imagination of a nation of gestating women? + +How the best modern novel collapses before the homely but immense human +significance of Homer's celestial swineherd entertaining divine Ulysses, +or even the solitary watchman in Aeschylus' "Agamemnon," crouched, like +a night-dog, on the roofs of the Atreidae, waiting for the signal fires +that should announce the fall of sacred Ilion! + +But one need not look long, even in contemporary British literature, to +find a man. In the author of "Characteristics" and "Sartor Resartus" +we surely encounter one of the true heroic cast. We are made aware that +here is something more than a _litterateur,_ something more than genius. +Here is veracity, homely directness and sincerity, and strong primary +idiosyncrasies. Here the man enters into the estimate of the author. +There is no separating them, as there never is in great examples. A +curious perversity runs through all, but in no way vitiates the result. +In both his moral and intellectual nature, Carlyle seems made with +a sort of stub and twist, like the best gun-barrels. The knotty and +corrugated character of his sentences suits well the peculiar and +intense activity of his mind. What a transition from his terse and +sharply articulated pages, brimming with character and life, and a +strange mixture of rage, humor, tenderness, poetry, philosophy, to the +cold disbelief and municipal splendor of Macaulay! Nothing in Carlyle's +contributions seems fortuitous. It all flows from a good and sufficient +cause in the character of the man. + +Every great man is, in a certain way, an Atlas, with the weight of the +world upon him. And if one is to criticise at all, he may say that, if +Carlyle had not been quite so conscious of this weight, his work would +have been better done. Yet to whom do we owe more, even as Americans? +Anti-democratic in his opinions, he surely is not so in spirit, or +in the quality of his make. The nobility of labor and the essential +nobility of man were never so effectively preached before. The deadliest +enemy of democracy is not the warning or dissenting voice, but it is the +spirit, rife among us, which would engraft upon our hardy Western stock +the sickly and decayed standards of the expiring feudal world. + +With two or three exceptions, there is little as yet in American +literature that shows much advance beyond the merely conventional and +scholastic,--little, I mean, in which one gets a whiff of the strong, +unbreathed air of mountain or prairie, or a taste of rude, new power +that is like the tonic of the sea. Thoreau occupies a niche by himself. +Thoreau was not a great personality, yet his writings have a strong +characteristic flavor. He is anti-scorbutic, like leeks and onions. He +has reference, also, to the highest truths. + +It is very likely true that our most native and original characters do +not yet take to literature. It is, perhaps, too early in the day. Iron +and lime have to pass through the vegetable before they can reach the +higher organization of the animal, and maybe this Western nerve and +heartiness will yet emerge on the intellectual plane. Let us hope that +it will indeed be Western nerve and heartiness when it gets there, and +not Eastern wit and epigram! + +In Abraham Lincoln we had a character of very marked and lofty type, the +most suggestive study or sketch of the future American man that has +yet appeared in our history. How broad, unconventional, and humane! +How democratic! how adhesive! No fine arabesque carvings, but strong, +unhewn, native traits, and deep lines of care, toil, and human +sympathy. Lincoln's Gettysburg speech is one of the most genuine +and characteristic utterances in our annals. It has the true antique +simplicity and impressiveness. It came straight from the man, and is as +sure an index of character as the living voice, or the physiognomy, or +the personal presence. Indeed, it may be said of Mr. Lincoln's entire +course while at the head of the nation, that no President, since the +first, ever in his public acts allowed the man so fully to appear, or +showed so little disposition to retreat behind the featureless political +mask which seems to adhere to the idea of gubernatorial dignity. + +It would be hardly fair to cite Everett's speech on the same occasion +as a specimen of the opposite style, wherein ornate scholarship and the +pride of talents dominate. Yet a stern critic would be obliged to +say that, as an author, Everett allowed, for the most part, only +the expurgated, complimenting, drawing-room man to speak; and that, +considering the need of America to be kept virile and broad at all +hazards, his contribution, both as man and writer, falls immeasurably +short of Abraham Lincoln's. + +What a noble specimen of its kind, and how free from any verbal tricks +or admixture of literary sauce, is Thoreau's "Maine Woods"! And what a +marked specimen of the opposite style is a certain other book I could +mention in which these wild and grand scenes serve but as a medium to +advertise the author's fund of classic lore! + +Can there be any doubt about the traits and outward signs of a noble +character, and is not the style of an author the manners of his soul? + +Is there a lyceum lecturer in the country who is above manoeuvring for +the applause of his audience? or a writer who is willing to make himself +of no account for the sake of what he has to say? Even in the best there +is something of the air and manners of a performer on exhibition. The +newspaper, or magazine, or book is a sort of raised platform upon which +the advertiser advances before a gaping and expectant crowd. Truly, how +well he _handles_ his subject! He turns it over, and around, and inside +out, and top-side down. He tosses it about; he twirls it; he takes it +apart and puts it together again, and knows well beforehand where the +applause will come in. Any reader, in taking up the antique authors, +must be struck by the contrast. + +"In Aeschylus," says Landor, "there is no trickery, no trifling, no +delay, no exposition, no garrulity, no dogmatism, no declamation, no +prosing,... but the loud, clear challenge, the firm, unstealthy step, of +an erect, broad-breasted soldier." + +On the whole, the old authors are better than the new. The real question +of literature is not simplified by culture or a multiplication of books, +as the conditions of life are always the same, and are not made one +whit easier by all the myriads of men and women who have lived upon the +globe. The standing want is never for more skill, but for newer, fresher +power,--a more plentiful supply of arterial blood. The discoverer, or +the historian, or the man of science, may begin where his predecessor +left off, but the poet or any artist must go back for a fresh start. +With him it is always the first day of creation, and he must begin at +the stump or nowhere. + + + + +VIII BEFORE BEAUTY + +I + +Before genius is manliness, and before beauty is power. The Russian +novelist and poet, Turgenieff, scattered all through whose works you +will find unmistakable traits of greatness, makes one of his characters +say, speaking of beauty, "The old masters,--they never hunted after +it; it comes of itself into their compositions, God knows whence, from +heaven or elsewhere. The whole world belonged to them, but we are unable +to clasp its broad spaces; our arms are too short." + +From the same depth of insight come these lines from "Leaves of Grass," +apropos of true poems:-- + +"They do not seek beauty--they are sought; Forever touching them, or +close upon them, follows beauty, longing, fain, love-sick." + +The Roman was perhaps the first to separate beauty from use, and to +pursue it as ornament merely. He built his grand edifice,--its piers, +its vaults, its walls of brick and concrete,--and then gave it a +marble envelope copied from the Greek architecture. The latter could be +stripped away, as in many cases it was by the hand of time, and leave +the essentials of the structure nearly complete. Not so with the Greek: +he did not seek the beautiful, he was beauty; his building had no +ornament, it was all structure; in its beauty was the flower of +necessity, the charm of inborn fitness and proportion. In other words, +"his art was structure refined into beautiful forms, not beautiful forms +superimposed upon structure," as with the Roman. And it is in Greek +mythology, is it not, that Beauty is represented as riding upon the back +of a lion? as she assuredly always does in their poetry and art,--rides +upon power, or terror, or savage fate; not only rides upon, but +is wedded and incorporated with it; hence the athletic desire and +refreshment her coming imparts. + +This is the invariable order of nature. Beauty without a rank material +basis enfeebles. The world is not thus made; man is not thus begotten +and nourished. + +It comes to me there is something implied or understood when we +look upon a beautiful object, that has quite as much to do with the +impression made upon the mind as anything in the object itself; perhaps +more. There is somehow an immense and undefined background of vast and +unconscionable energy, as of earthquakes, and ocean storms, and cleft +mountains, across which things of beauty play, and to which they +constantly defer; and when this background is wanting, as it is in much +current poetry, beauty sickens and dies, or at most has only a feeble +existence. + +Nature does nothing merely for beauty; beauty follows as the inevitable +result; and the final impression of health and finish which her works +make upon the mind is owing as much to those things which are not +technically called beautiful as to those which are. The former give +identity to the latter. The one is to the other what substance is to +form, or bone to flesh. The beauty of nature includes all that is called +beautiful, as its flower; and all that is not called beautiful, as its +stalk and roots. + +Indeed, when I go to the woods or the fields, or ascend to the hilltop, +I do not seem to be gazing upon beauty at all, but to be breathing it +like the air. I am not dazzled or astonished; I am in no hurry to look +lest it be gone. I would not have the litter and debris removed, or the +banks trimmed, or the ground painted. What I enjoy is commensurate +with the earth and sky itself. It clings to the rocks and trees; it is +kindred to the roughness and savagery; it rises from every tangle and +chasm; it perches on the dry oak-stubs with the hawks and buzzards; the +crows shed it from their wings and weave it into their nests of coarse +sticks; the fox barks it, the cattle low it, and every mountain path +leads to its haunts. I am not a spectator of, but a participator in it. +It is not an adornment; its roots strike to the centre of the earth. + +All true beauty in nature or in art is like the iridescent hue of +mother-of-pearl, which is intrinsic and necessary, being the result of +the arrangement of the particles,--the flowering of the mechanism of the +shell; or like the beauty of health which comes out of and reaches back +again to the bones and the digestion. There is no grace like the grace +of strength. What sheer muscular gripe and power lie back of the firm, +delicate notes of the great violinist! "Wit," says Heine,--and the same +thing is true of beauty,--"isolated, is worthless. It is only endurable +when it rests on a solid basis." + +In fact, beauty as a separate and distinct thing does not exist. Neither +can it be reached by any sorting or sifting or clarifying process. It is +an experience of the mind, and must be preceded by certain conditions, +just as light is an experience of the eye, and sound of the ear. + +To attempt to manufacture beauty is as vain as to attempt to manufacture +truth; and to give it to us in poems or any form of art, without a lion +of some sort, a lion of truth or fitness or power, is to emasculate it +and destroy its volition. + +But current poetry is, for the most part, an attempt to do this very +thing, to give us beauty without beauty's antecedents and foil. The +poets want to spare us the annoyance of the beast. Since beauty is +the chief attraction, why not have this part alone, pure and +unadulterated,--why not pluck the plumage from the bird, the flower +from its stalk, the moss from the rock, the shell from the shore, the +honey-bag from the bee, and thus have in brief what pleases us? Hence, +with rare exceptions, one feels, on opening the latest book of poems, +like exclaiming, Well, here is the beautiful at last divested of +everything else,--of truth, of power, of utility,--and one may add of +beauty, too. It charms as color, or flowers, or jewels, or perfume +charms--and that is the end of it. + +It is ever present to the true artist, in his attempt to report nature, +that every object as it stands in the circuit of cause and effect has +a history which involves its surroundings, and that the depth of the +interest which it awakens in us is in proportion as its integrity in +this respect is preserved. In nature we are prepared for any opulence +of color or of vegetation, or freak of form, or display of any kind, +because of the preponderance of the common, ever-present feature of the +earth. The foil is always at hand. In like manner in the master poems we +are never surfeited with mere beauty. + +Woe to any artist who disengages Beauty from the wide background of +rudeness, darkness, and strength,--and disengages her from absolute +nature! The mild and beneficent aspects of nature,--what gulfs and +abysses of power underlie them! The great shaggy, barbaric earth,--yet +the summing-up, the plenum, of all we know or can know of beauty! So the +orbic poems of the world have a foundation as of the earth itself, and +are beautiful because they are something else first. Homer chose for his +groundwork War, clinching, tearing, tugging war; in Dante, it is Hell; +in Milton, Satan and the Fall; in Shakespeare, it is the fierce Feudal +world, with its towering and kingly personalities; in Byron, it is +Revolt and diabolic passion. When we get to Tennyson, the lion is a good +deal tamed, but he is still there in the shape of the proud, haughty, +and manly Norman, and in many forms yet stimulates the mind. + +The perception of cosmical beauty comes by a vital original process. +It is in some measure a creative act, and those works that rest upon +it make demands--perhaps extraordinary ones--upon the reader or the +beholder. We regard mere surface glitter, or mere verbal sweetness, in +a mood entirely passive, and with a pleasure entirely profitless. The +beauty of excellent stage scenery seems much more obvious and easy of +apprehension than the beauty of trees and hills themselves, inasmuch as +the act of association in the mind is much easier and cheaper than the +act of original perception. + +Only the greatest works in any department afford any explanation of this +wonder we call nature, or aid the mind in arriving at correct +notions concerning it. To copy here and there a line or a trait is no +explanation; but to translate nature into another language--to bridge +it to us, to repeat in some sort the act of creation itself--is the +crowning triumph of poetic art. + + + +II + +After the critic has enumerated all the stock qualities of the poet, +as taste, fancy, melody, it remains to be said that unless there is +something in him that is _living identity,_ something analogous to the +growing, pushing, reproducing forces of nature, all the rest in the end +pass for but little. + +This is perhaps what the German critic, Lessing, really means by +_action,_ for true poems are more like deeds, expressive of something +behind, more like acts of heroism or devotion, or like personal +character, than like thoughts or intellections. + +All the master poets have in their work an interior, chemical, +assimilative property, a sort of gastric juice which dissolves thought +and form, and holds in vital fusion religions, times, races, and the +theory of their own construction, naming up with electric and defiant +power,--power without any admixture of resisting form, as in a living +organism. + +There are in nature two types or forms, the cell and the crystal. +One means the organic, the other the inorganic; one means growth, +development, life; the other means reaction, solidification, rest. The +hint and model of all creative works is the cell; critical, reflective, +and philosophical works are nearer akin to the crystal; while there +is much good literature that is neither the one nor the other +distinctively, but which in a measure touches and includes both. But +crystallic beauty or cut and polished gems of thought, the result of the +reflex rather than the direct action of the mind, we do not expect to +find in the best poems, though they may be most prized by specially +intellectual persons. In the immortal poems the solids are very few, or +do not appear at all as solids,--as lime and iron,--any more than they +do in organic nature, in the flesh of the peach or the apple. The main +thing in every living organism is the vital fluids: seven tenths of man +is water; and seven tenths of Shakespeare is passion, emotion,--fluid +humanity. Out of this arise his forms, as Venus arose out of the sea, +and as man is daily built up out of the liquids of the body. We cannot +taste, much less assimilate, a solid until it becomes a liquid; and your +great idea, your sermon or moral, lies upon your poem a dead, cumbrous +mass unless there is adequate heat and solvent, emotional power. Herein +I think Wordsworth's "Excursion" fails as a poem. It has too much +solid matter. It is an over-freighted bark that does not ride the waves +buoyantly and lifelike; far less so than Tennyson's "In Memoriam," which +is just as truly a philosophical poem as the "Excursion." (Wordsworth is +the fresher poet; his poems seem really to have been written in the open +air, and to have been brought directly under the oxygenating influence +of outdoor nature; while in Tennyson this influence seems tempered or +farther removed.) + +The physical cosmos itself is not a thought, but an act. Natural objects +do not affect us like well-wrought specimens or finished handicraft, +which have nothing to follow, but as living, procreating energy. Nature +is perpetual transition. Everything passes and presses on; there is no +pause, no completion, no explanation. To produce and multiply endlessly, +without ever reaching the last possibility of excellence, and without +committing herself to any end, is the law of Nature. + +These considerations bring us very near the essential difference +between prose and poetry, or rather between the poetic and the didactic +treatment of a subject. The essence of creative art is always the same; +namely, interior movement and fusion; while the method of the didactic +or prosaic treatment is fixity, limitation. The latter must formulate +and define; but the principle of the former is to flow, to suffuse, to +mount, to escape. We can conceive of life only as something constantly +_becoming._ It plays forever on the verge. It is never _in loco,_ but +always _in transitu._ Arrest the wind, and it is no longer the wind; +close your hands upon the light, and behold, it is gone. + +The antithesis of art in method is science, as Coleridge has intimated. +As the latter aims at the particular, so the former aims at the +universal. One would have truth of detail, the other truth of +_ensemble._ The method of science may be symbolized by the straight +line, that of art by the curve. The results of science, relatively to +its aim, must be parts and pieces; while art must give the whole +in every act; not quantitively of course, but qualitively,--by the +integrity of the spirit in which it works. + +The Greek mind will always be the type of the artist mind, mainly +because of its practical bent, its healthful objectivity. The Greek +never looked inward, but outward. Criticism and speculation were foreign +to him. His head shows a very marked predominance of the motive and +perceptive powers over the reflective. The expression of the face is +never what we call intellectual or thoughtful, but commanding. His gods +are not philosophers, but delight in deeds, justice, rulership. + +Among the differences between the modern and the classical aesthetic +mind is the greater precision and definiteness of the latter. The +modern genius is Gothic, and demands in art a certain vagueness and +spirituality like that of music, refusing to be grasped and formulated. +Hence for us (and this is undoubtedly an improvement) there must always +be something about a poem, or any work of art, besides the evident +intellect or plot of it, or what is on its surface, or what it tells. +This something is the Invisible, the Undefined, almost Unexpressed, +and is perhaps the best part of any work of art, as it is of a noble +personality. To amuse, to exhibit culture, to formulate the aesthetic, +or even to excite the emotions, is by no means all,--is not even the +deepest part. Beside these, and inclosing all, is the general impalpable +effect, like good air, or the subtle presence of good spirits, wordless +but more potent far than words. As, in the superbest person, it is not +merely what he says or knows or shows, or even how he behaves, but the +silent qualities, like gravitation, that insensibly but resistlessly +hold us; so in a good poem, or in any other expression of art. + + + + +IX EMERSON + +Wherein the race has so far lost and gained, in being transplanted from +Europe to the New England soil and climate, is well illustrated by the +writings of Emerson. There is greater refinement and sublimation of +thought, greater clearness and sharpness of outline, greater audacity of +statement, but, on the other hand, there is a loss of bulk, of unction, +of adipose tissue, and shall we say of power? + +Emerson is undoubtedly a master on the New England scale,--such a master +as the land and race are capable of producing. He stands out clear and +undeniable. The national type, as illustrated by that section of the +country, is the purest and strongest in him of any yet. He can never +suffer eclipse. Compared with the English or German master, he is +undoubtedly deficient in viscera, in moral and intellectual stomach; +but, on the other hand, he is of a fibre and quality hard to match +in any age or land. From first to last he strikes one as something +extremely pure and compact, like a nut or an egg. Great matters and +tendencies lie folded in him, or rather are summarized in his pages. He +writes short but pregnant chapters on great themes, as in his "English +Traits," a book like rich preserves put up pound for pound, a pound +of Emerson to every pound of John Bull. His chapter on Swedenborg in +"Representative Men" is a good sample of his power to abbreviate and +restate with added force. His mind acts like a sun-lens in gathering the +cold pale beams of that luminary to a focus which warms and stimulates +the reader in a surprising manner. The gist of the whole matter is here; +and how much weariness and dullness and plodding is left out! + +In fact, Emerson is an essence, a condensation; more so, perhaps, than +any other man who has appeared in literature. Nowhere else is there such +a preponderance of pure statement, of the very attar of thought, over +the bulkier, circumstantial, qualifying, or secondary elements. He gives +us net results. He is like those strong artificial fertilizers. A pinch +of him is equivalent to a page or two of Johnson, and he is pitched many +degrees higher as an essayist than even Bacon. He has had an immediate +stimulating effect upon all the best minds of the country; how deep or +lasting this influence will be remains to be seen. + +This point and brevity has its convenience and value especially in +certain fields of literature. I by no means would wish to water Emerson; +yet it will not do to lose sight of the fact that mass and inertia are +indispensable to the creator. Considering him as poet alone, I have +no doubt of his irremediable deficiency here. You cannot have broad, +massive effect, deep light and shade, or a torrent of power, with such +extreme refinement and condensation. The superphosphates cannot take the +place of the coarser, bulkier fertilizers. Especially in poetry do +we require pure thought to be well diluted with the human, emotional +qualities. In the writing most precious to the race, how little is +definition and intellectual formula, and how much is impulse, emotion, +will, character, blood, chyle! We must have liquids and gases and +solvents. We perhaps get more of them in Carlyle. Emerson's page +has more serene astral beauty than Carlyle's, but not that intense +blast-furnace heat that melts down the most obdurate facts and +characters into something plastic and poetical. Emerson's ideal is +always the scholar, the man of books and ready wit; Carlyle's hero is a +riding or striding ruler, or a master worker in some active field. + +The antique mind no doubt affords the true type of health and wholeness +in this respect. The Greek could see, and feel, and paint, and carve, +and speak nothing but emotional man. In nature he saw nothing but +personality,--nothing but human or superhuman qualities; to him the +elements all took the human shape. Of that vague, spiritual, abstract +something which we call Nature he had no conception. He had no +sentiment, properly speaking, but impulse and will-power. And the +master minds of the world, in proportion to their strength, their spinal +strength, have approximated to this type. Dante, Angelo, Shakespeare, +Byron, Goethe, saw mainly man, and him not abstractly but concretely. +And this is the charm of Burns and the glory of Scott. Carlyle has +written the best histories and biographies of modern times, because he +sees man with such fierce and steadfast eyes. Emerson sees him also, +but he is not interested in him as a man, but mainly as a spirit, as a +demigod, or as a wit or a philosopher. + +Emerson's quality has changed a good deal in his later writings. His +corn is no longer in the milk; it has grown hard, and we that read have +grown hard, too. He has now ceased to be an expansive, revolutionary +force, but he has not ceased to be a writer of extraordinary gripe and +unexpected resources of statement. His startling piece of advice, "Hitch +your wagon to a star," is typical of the man, as combining the most +unlike and widely separate qualities. Because not less marked than his +idealism and mysticism is his shrewd common sense, his practical bent, +his definiteness,--in fact, the sharp New England mould in which he is +cast. He is the master Yankee, the centennial flower of that thrifty and +peculiar stock. More especially in his later writings and speakings +do we see the native New England traits,--the alertness, eagerness, +inquisitiveness, thrift, dryness, archness, caution, the nervous energy +as distinguished from the old English unction and vascular force. How he +husbands himself,--what prudence, what economy, always spending up, as +he says, and not down! How alert, how attentive; what an inquisitor; +always ready with some test question, with some fact or idea to match +or to verify, ever on the lookout for some choice bit of adventure or +information, or some anecdote that has pith and point! No tyro basks and +takes his ease in his presence, but is instantly put on trial and must +answer or be disgraced. He strikes at an idea like a falcon at a bird. +His great fear seems to be lest there be some fact or point worth +knowing that will escape him. He is a close-browed miser of the +scholar's gains. He turns all values into intellectual coin. Every book +or person or experience is an investment that will or will not warrant +a good return in ideas. He goes to the Radical Club, or to the literary +gathering, and listens with the closest attention to every word that is +said, in hope that something will be said, some word dropped, that has +the ring of the true metal. Apparently he does not permit himself a +moment's indifference or inattention. His own pride is always to have +the ready change, to speak the exact and proper word, to give to every +occasion the dignity of wise speech. You are bartered with for your +best. There is no profit in life but in the interchange of ideas, and +the chief success is to have a head well filled with them. Hard cash at +that; no paper promises satisfy him; he loves the clink and glint of the +real coin. + +His earlier writings were more flowing and suggestive, and had reference +to larger problems; but now everything has got weighed and stamped and +converted into the medium of wise and scholarly conversation. It is of +great value; these later essays are so many bags of genuine coin, which +it has taken a lifetime to hoard; not all gold, but all good, and the +fruit of wise industry and economy. + +I know of no other writing that yields the reader so many strongly +stamped medallion-like sayings and distinctions. There is a perpetual +refining and recoining of the current wisdom of life and conversation. +It is the old gold or silver or copper, but how bright and new it looks +in his pages! Emerson loves facts, things, objects, as the workman his +tools. He makes everything serve. The stress of expression is so great +that he bends the most obdurate element to his purpose; as the bird, +under her keen necessity, weaves the most contrary and diverse +materials into her nest. He seems to like best material that is a little +refractory; it makes his page more piquant and stimulating. Within +certain limits he loves roughness, but not at the expense of harmony. +He has wonderful hardiness and push. Where else in literature is there +a mind, moving in so rare a medium, that gives one such a sense of +tangible resistance and force? It is a principle in mechanics that +velocity is twice as great as mass: double your speed and you double +your heat, though you halve your weight. In like manner this body we +are considering is not the largest, but its speed is great, and the +intensity of its impact with objects and experience is almost without +parallel. Everything about a man like Emerson is important. I find his +phrenology and physiognomy more than ordinarily typical and suggestive. +Look at his picture there,--large, strong features on a small face and +head,--no blank spaces; all given up to expression; a high predaceous +nose, a sinewy brow, a massive, benevolent chin. In most men there is +more face than feature, but here is a vast deal more feature than face, +and a corresponding alertness and emphasis of character. Indeed, the +man is made after this fashion. He is all type; his expression is +transcendent. His mind has the hand's pronounced anatomy,--its cords +and sinews and multiform articulations and processes, its opposing and +coordinating power. If his brain is small, its texture is fine and +its convolutions are deep. There have been broader and more catholic +natures, but few so towering and audacious in expression and so rich +in characteristic traits. Every scrap and shred of him is important +and related. Like the strongly aromatic herbs and simples,--sage, mint, +wintergreen, sassafras,--the least part carries the flavor of the whole. +Is there one indifferent or equivocal or unsympathizing drop of blood +in him? Where he is at all, he is entirely,--nothing extemporaneous; +his most casual word seems to have lain in pickle a long time, and is +saturated through and through with the Emersonian brine. Indeed, so +pungent and penetrating is his quality that even his quotations seem +more than half his own. + +He is a man who occupies every inch of his rightful territory; he is +there in proper person to the farthest bound. Not every man is himself +and his best self at all times and to his finger points. Many great +characters, perhaps the greatest, have more or less neutral or waste +ground. You must penetrate a distance before you reach the real quick. +Or there is a good wide margin of the commonplace which is sure to put +them on good terms with the mass of their fellow-citizens. And one would +think Emerson could afford to relax a little; that he had earned the +right to a dull page or two now and then. The second best or third best +word sometimes would make us appreciate his first best all the more. +Even his god-father Plato nods occasionally, but Emerson's good breeding +will not for a moment permit such a slight to the reader. + +Emerson's peculiar quality is very subtle, but very sharp and firm +and unmistakable. It is not analogous to the commoner, slower-going +elements, as heat, air, fire, water, but is nearer akin to that +elusive but potent something we call electricity. It is abrupt, freaky, +unexpected, and always communicates a little wholesome shock. It darts +this way and that, and connects the far and the near in every line. +There is always a leaping thread of light, and there is always a kind +of answering peal or percussion. With what quickness and suddenness +extremes are brought together! The reader is never prepared for what is +to come next; the spark will most likely leap from some source or +fact least thought of. His page seldom glows and burns, but there is a +never-ceasing crackling and discharge of moral and intellectual force +into the mind. + +His chief weapon, and one that he never lays down, is identical with +that of the great wits, namely, surprise. The point of his remark or +idea is always sprung upon the reader, never quietly laid before him. +He has a mortal dread of tameness and flatness, and would make the very +water we drink bite the tongue. + +He has been from the first a speaker and lecturer, and his style has +been largely modeled according to the demand of those sharp, heady New +England audiences for ceaseless intellectual friction and chafing. Hence +every sentence is braided hard, and more or less knotted, and, though +of silk, makes the mind tingle. He startles by overstatement, by +understatement, by paradox, by antithesis, and by synthesis. Into +every sentence enters the unexpected,--the congruous leaping from the +incongruous, the high coming down, the low springing up, likeness or +relation suddenly coming into view where before was only difference or +antagonism. How he delights to bring the reader up with a short turn, +to impale him on a knotty point, to explode one of his verbal bombshells +under his very nose! Yet there is no trickery or rhetorical legerdemain. +His heroic fibre always saves him. + +The language in which Taine describes Bacon applies with even more force +to Emerson:-- + +"Bacon," he says, "is a producer of conceptions and of sentences. The +matter being explored, he says to us: 'Such it is; touch it not on that +side; it must be approached from the other.' Nothing more; no proof, no +effort to convince; he affirms, and nothing more; he has thought in the +manner of artists and poets, and he speaks after the manner of prophets +and seers. 'Cogita et visa,'--this title of one of his books might be +the title of all. His process is that of the creators; it is intuition, +not reasoning.... There is nothing more hazardous, more like fantasy, +than this mode of thought when it is not checked by natural and good +strong common sense. This common sense, which is a kind of natural +divination, the stable equilibrium of an intellect always gravitating +to the true, like the needle to the north pole, Bacon possesses in the +highest degree. He has a preeminently practical, even an utilitarian +mind." + +It is significant, and is indeed the hidden seed or root out of which +comes the explanation of much, if not the main part, of his life and +writings, that Emerson comes of a long line of clergymen; that the blood +in his veins has been teaching, and preaching, and thinking, and +growing austere, these many generations. One wonders that it is still so +bounding and strong, so red with iron and quick with oxygen. But in +him seems to be illustrated one of those rare cases in the genealogy +of families where the best is carried forward each time, and steadily +recruited and intensified. It does not seem possible for any man to +become just what Emerson is from the stump, though perhaps great men +have been the fruit of one generation; but there is a quality in him, an +aroma of fine manners, a propriety, a chivalry in the blood, that dates +back, and has been refined and transmitted many times. Power is born +with a man, and is always first hand, but culture, genius, noble +instincts, gentle manners, or the easy capacity for these things, may +be, and to a greater or a lesser extent are, the contribution of the +past. Emerson's culture is radical and ante-natal, and never fails him. +The virtues of all those New England ministers and all those tomes of +sermons are in this casket. One fears sometimes that he has been too +much clarified, or that there is not enough savage grace or original +viciousness and grit in him to save him. How he hates the roysterers, +and all the rank, turbulent, human passions, and is chilled by the +thought that perhaps after all Shakespeare led a vulgar life! + +When Tyndall was here, he showed us how the dark, coarse, invisible heat +rays could be strained out of the spectrum; or, in other words, that +every solar beam was weighted with a vast, nether, invisible side, which +made it a lever of tremendous power in organic nature. After some such +analogy, one sees how the highest order of power in the intellectual +world draws upon and is nourished by those rude, primitive, barbaric +human qualities that our culture and pietism tend to cut off and strain +out. Our culture has its eye on the other end of the spectrum, where +the fine violet and indigo rays are; but all the lifting, rounding, +fructifying powers of the system are in the coarse, dark rays--the +black devil--at the base. The angel of light is yoked with the demon of +darkness, and the pair create and sustain the world. + +In rare souls like Emerson, the fruit of extreme culture, it is +inevitable that at least some of the heat rays should be lost, and we +miss them especially when we contrast him with the elder masters. The +elder masters did not seem to get rid of the coarse or vulgar in human +life, but royally accepted it, and struck their roots into it, and drew +from it sustenance and power: but there is an ever-present suspicion +that Emerson prefers the saints to the sinners; prefers the prophets and +seers to Homer, Shakespeare, and Dante. Indeed, it is to be distinctly +stated and emphasized, that Emerson is essentially a priest, and that +the key to all he has said and written is to be found in the fact +that his point of view is not that of the acceptor, the +creator,--Shakespeare's point of view,--but that of the refiner and +selector, the priest's point of view. He described his own state rather +than that of mankind when he said, "The human mind stands ever in +perplexity, demanding intellect, demanding sanctity, impatient equally +of each without the other." + +Much surprise has been expressed in literary circles in this country +that Emerson has not followed up his first off-hand indorsement of Walt +Whitman with fuller and more deliberate approval of that poet, but has +rather taken the opposite tack. But the wonder is that he should have +been carried off his feet at all in the manner he was; and it must +have been no ordinary breeze that did it. Emerson shares with his +contemporaries the vast preponderance of the critical and discerning +intellect over the fervid, manly qualities and faith. His power of +statement is enormous; his scope of being is not enormous. The prayer +he uttered many years ago for a poet of the modern, one who could see in +the gigantic materialism of the times the carnival of the same deities +we so much admire in Greece and Rome, seems to many to have even been +explicitly answered in Whitman; but Emerson is balked by the cloud of +materials, the din and dust of action, and the moving armies, in which +the god comes enveloped. + +But Emerson has his difficulties with all the poets. Homer is too +literal, Milton too literary, and there is too much of the whooping +savage in Whitman. He seems to think the real poet is yet to appear; a +poet on new terms, the reconciler, the poet-priest,--one who shall unite +the whiteness and purity of the saint with the power and unction of the +sinner; one who shall bridge the chasm between Shakespeare and St. John. +For when our Emerson gets on his highest horse, which he does only on +two or three occasions, he finds Shakespeare only a half man, and +that it would take Plato and Manu and Moses and Jesus to complete him. +Shakespeare, he says, rested with the symbol, with the festal beauty of +the world, and did not take the final step, and explore the essence +of things, and ask, "Whence? What? and Whither?" He was not wise for +himself; he did not lead a beautiful, saintly life, but ate, and drank, +and reveled, and affiliated with all manner of persons, and quaffed the +cup of life with gusto and relish. The elect, spotless souls will always +look upon the heat and unconscious optimism of the great poet with deep +regret. But if man would not become emasculated, if human life is to +continue, we must cherish the coarse as well as the fine, the root as +well as the top and flower. The poet-priest in the Emersonian sense +has never yet appeared, and what reason have we to expect him? The poet +means life, the whole of life,--all your ethics and philosophies, and +essences and reason of things, in vital play and fusion, clothed with +form and color, and throbbing with passion: the priest means a part, a +thought, a precept; he means suppression, expurgation, death. To have +gone farther than Shakespeare would have been to cease to be a poet, and +to become a mystic or a seer. + +Yet it would be absurd to say, as a leading British literary journal +recently did, that Emerson is not a poet. He is one kind of a poet. He +has written plenty of poems that are as melodious as the hum of a wild +bee in the air,--chords of wild aeolian music. + +Undoubtedly his is, on the whole, a bloodless kind of poetry. It +suggests the pale gray matter of the cerebrum rather than flesh and +blood. Mr. William Rossetti has made a suggestive remark about him. He +is not so essentially a poet, says this critic, as he is a Druid that +wanders among the bards, and strikes the harp with even more than bardic +stress. + +Not in the poetry of any of his contemporaries is there such a burden +of the mystery of things, nor are there such round wind-harp tones, nor +lines so tense and resonant, and blown upon by a breeze from the highest +heaven of thought. In certain respects he has gone beyond any other. He +has gone beyond the symbol to the thing signified. He has emptied poetic +forms of their meaning and made poetry of that. He would fain cut the +world up into stars to shine in the intellectual firmament. He is more +and he is less than the best. + +He stands among other poets like a pine-tree amid a forest of oak and +maple. He seems to belong to another race, and to other climes and +conditions. He is great in one direction, up; no dancing leaves, but +rapt needles; never abandonment, never a tossing and careering, never +an avalanche of emotion; the same in sun and snow, scattering his cones, +and with night and obscurity amid his branches. He is moral first and +last, and it is through his impassioned and poetic treatment of the +moral law that he gains such an ascendency over his reader. He says, as +for other things he makes poetry of them, but the moral law makes poetry +of him. He sees in the world only the ethical, but he sees it through +the aesthetic faculty. Hence his page has the double charm of the +beautiful and the good. + + + +II + +One of the penalties Emerson pays for his sharp decision, his mental +pertinence and resistance, is the curtailment of his field of vision and +enjoyment. He is one of those men whom the gods drive with blinders on, +so that they see fiercely in only a few directions. Supreme lover as he +is of poetry,--Herrick's poetry,--yet from the whole domain of what may +be called emotional poetry, the poetry of fluid humanity, tallied by +music, he seems to be shut out. This may be seen by his reference +to Shelley in his last book, "Letters and Social Aims," and by +his preference of the metaphysical poet throughout his writings. +Wordsworth's famous "Ode" is, he says, the high-water mark of English +literature. What he seems to value most in Shakespeare is the marvelous +wit, the pregnant sayings. He finds no poet in France, and in his +"English Traits" credits Tennyson with little but melody and color. (In +our last readings, do we not surely come to feel the manly and robust +fibre beneath Tennyson's silken vestments?) He demands of poetry that +it be a kind of spiritual manna, and is at last forced to confess that +there are no poets, and that when such angels do appear, Homer and +Milton will be tin pans. + +One feels that this will not do, and that health, and wholeness, and +the well-being of man are more in the keeping of Shakespeare than in the +hands of Zoroaster or any of the saints. I doubt if that rarefied air +will make good red blood and plenty of it. + +But Emerson makes his point plain, and is not indebted to any of his +teachers for it. It is the burden of all he writes upon the subject. The +long discourse that opens his last volume [footnote: _Letters and Social +Aims_] has numerous subheadings, as "Poetry," "Imagination," "Creation," +"Morals," and "Transcendency;" but it's all a plea for transcendency. I +am reminded of the story of an old Indian chief who was invited to some +great dinner where the first course was "succotash." When the second +course was ready the old Indian said he would have a little more +succotash, and when the third was ready he called for more succotash and +so with the fourth and fifth, and on to the end. In like manner Emerson +will have nothing but the "spiritual law" in poetry, and he has an +enormous appetite for that. Let him have it, but why should he be so +sure that mankind all want succotash? Mankind finally comes to care +little for what any poet has to _say,_ but only for what he has to +_sing._ We want the pearl of thought dissolved in the wine of life. How +much better are sound bones and a good digestion in poetry than all the +philosophy and transcendentalism in the world! + +What one comes at last to want is power, mastery; and, whether it be +mastery over the subtleties of the intellect, as in Emerson himself, or +over the passions and the springs of action, as in Shakespeare, or over +our terrors and the awful hobgoblins of hell and Satan, as in Dante, or +over vast masses and spaces of nature and the abysms of aboriginal man, +as in Walt Whitman, what matters it? Are we not refreshed by all? There +is one mastery in Burns, another in Byron, another in Rabelais, and in +Victor Hugo, and in Tennyson; and though the critic has his preferences, +though he affect one more than another, yet who shall say this one is +a poet and that one is not? "There may be any number of supremes," says +the master, and "one by no means contravenes another." Every gas is +a vacuum to every other gas, says Emerson, quoting the scientist; and +every great poet complements and leaves the world free to every other +great poet. + +Emerson's limitation or fixity is seen also in the fact that he has +taken no new step in his own direction, if indeed another step could be +taken in that direction and not step off. He is a prisoner on his +peak. He cannot get away from the old themes. His later essays are +upon essentially the same subjects as his first. He began by writing +on nature, greatness, manners, art, poetry, and he is still writing on +them. He is a husbandman who practices no rotation of crops, but submits +to the exhaustive process of taking about the same things from his soil +year after year. Some readers think they detect a falling off. It is +evident there is not the same spontaneity, and that the soil has to be +more and more stirred and encouraged, which is not at all to be wondered +at. + +But if Emerson has not advanced, he has not receded, at least in +conviction and will, which is always the great danger with our bold +prophets. The world in which he lives, the themes upon which he writes, +never become hackneyed to him. They are always fresh and new. He has +hardened, but time has not abated one jot or tittle his courage and +hope,--no cynicism and no relaxing of his hold, no decay of his faith, +while the nobleness of his tone, the chivalry of his utterance, is even +more marked than at first. Better a hundred-fold than his praise of fine +manners is the delicacy and courtesy and the grace of generous breeding +displayed on every page. Why does one grow impatient and vicious when +Emerson writes of fine manners and the punctilios of conventional life, +and feel like kicking into the street every divinity enshrined in the +drawing-room? It is a kind of insult to a man to speak the word in his +presence. Purify the parlors indeed by keeping out the Choctaws, the +laughers! Let us go and hold high carnival for a week, and split the +ears of the groundlings with our "contemptible squeals of joy." And when +he makes a dead set at praising eloquence, I find myself instantly on +the side of the old clergyman he tells of who prayed that he might never +be eloquent; or when he makes the test of a man an intellectual one, as +his skill at repartee, and praises the literary crack shot, and defines +manliness to be readiness, as he does in this last volume and in the +preceding one, I am filled with a perverse envy of all the confused and +stammering heroes of history. Is Washington faltering out a few broken +and ungrammatical sentences, in reply to the vote of thanks of the +Virginia legislature, less manly than the glib tongue in the court-room +or in the club that can hit the mark every time? The test of a wit or of +a scholar is one thing; the test of a man, I take it, is quite another. +In this and some other respects Emerson is well antidoted by Carlyle, +who lays the stress on the opposite qualities, and charges his hero to +hold his tongue. But one cheerfully forgives Emerson the way he puts his +thumb-nail on the bores. He speaks feelingly, and no doubt from as deep +an experience as any man in America. + +I really hold Emerson in such high esteem that I think I can safely +indulge myself in a little more fault-finding with him. + +I think it must be admitted that he is deficient in sympathy. This +accounts in a measure for his coolness, his self-possession, and that +kind of uncompromising rectitude or inflexibleness that marks his +career, and that he so lauds in his essays. No man is so little liable +to be warped or compromised in any way as the unsympathetic man. +Emerson's ideal is the man who stands firm, who is unmoved, who never +laughs, or apologizes, or deprecates, or makes concessions, or assents +through good-nature, or goes abroad; who is not afraid of giving +offense; "who answers you without supplication in his eye,"--in fact, +who stands like a granite pillar amid the slough of life. You may +wrestle with this man, he says, or swim with him, or lodge in the same +chamber with him, or eat at the same table, and yet he is a thousand +miles off, and can at any moment finish with you. He is a sheer +precipice, is this man, and not to be trifled with. You shrinking, +quivering, acquiescing natures, avaunt! You sensitive plants, you +hesitating, indefinite creatures, you uncertain around the edges, you +non-resisting, and you heroes, whose courage is quick, but whose wit is +tardy, make way, and let the human crustacean pass. Emerson is moulded +upon this pattern. It is no mush and milk that you get at this table. "A +great man is coming to dine with me; I do not wish to please him; I wish +that he should wish to please me." On the lecture stand he might be +of wood, so far as he is responsive to the moods and feelings of his +auditors. They must come to him; he will not go to them: but they do not +always come. Latterly the people have felt insulted, the lecturer showed +them so little respect. Then, before a promiscuous gathering, and in +stirring and eventful times like ours, what anachronisms most of his +lectures are, even if we take the high ground that they are pearls +before swine! The swine may safely demand some apology of him who offers +them pearls instead of corn. + +Emerson's fibre is too fine for large public uses. He is what he is, and +is to be accepted as such, only let us _know_ what he is. He does not +speak to universal conditions, or to human nature in its broadest, +deepest, strongest phases. His thought is far above the great sea level +of humanity, where stand most of the world's masters. He is like one of +those marvelously clear mountain lakes whose water-line runs above +all the salt seas of the globe. He is very precious, taken at his real +worth. Why find fault with the isolation and the remoteness in view of +the sky-like purity and depth? + +Still I must go on sounding and exploring him, reporting where I touch +bottom and where I do not. He reaps great advantage from his want of +sympathy. The world makes no inroads upon him through this channel. He +is not distracted by the throng or maybe the mob of emotions that find +entrance here. He shines like a star undimmed by current events. He +speaks as from out the interstellar spaces. 'T is vulgar sympathy makes +mortals of us all, and I think Emerson's poetry finally lacks just that +human coloring and tone, that flesh tint of the heart, which vulgar +sympathy with human life as such imparts. + +But after we have made all possible deductions from Emerson, there +remains the fact that he is a living force, and, tried by home +standards, a master. Wherein does the secret of his power lie? He is +the prophet and philosopher of young men. The old man and the man of the +world make little of him, but of the youth who is ripe for him he takes +almost an unfair advantage. One secret of his charm I take to be the +instant success with which he transfers our interest in the romantic, +the chivalrous, the heroic, to the sphere of morals and the intellect. +We are let into another realm unlooked for, where daring and imagination +also lead. The secret and suppressed heart finds a champion. To the +young man fed upon the penny precepts and staple Johnsonianism of +English literature, and upon what is generally doled out in the schools +and colleges, it is a surprise; it is a revelation. A new world opens +before him. The nebulae of his spirit are resolved or shown to be +irresolvable. The fixed stars of his inner firmament are brought +immeasurably near. He drops all other books. He will gaze and wonder. +From Locke or Johnson or Wayland to Emerson is like a change from the +school history to the Arabian Nights. There may be extravagances and +some jugglery, but for all that the lesson is a genuine one, and to us +of this generation immense. + +Emerson is the knight-errant of the moral sentiment. He leads, in +our time and country, one illustrious division, at least, in the holy +crusade of the affections and the intuitions against the usurpations of +tradition and theological dogma. He marks the flower, the culmination, +under American conditions and in the finer air of the New World, of the +reaction begun by the German philosophers, and passed along by later +French and English thinkers, of man against circumstance, of +spirit against form, of the present against the past. What splendid +affirmation, what inspiring audacity, what glorious egoism, what +generous brag, what sacred impiety! There is an _eclat_ about his words, +and a brave challenging of immense odds, that is like an army with +banners. It stirs the blood like a bugle-call: beauty, bravery, and a +sacred cause,--the three things that win with us always. The first essay +is a forlorn hope. See what the chances are: "The world exists for the +education of each man.... He should see that he can live all history in +his own person. He must sit solidly at home, and not suffer himself to +be bullied by kings or empires, but know that he is greater than all +the geography and all the government of the world; he must transfer the +point of view from which history is commonly read from Rome and Athens +and London to himself, and not deny his conviction that he is the court, +and, if England or Egypt have anything to say to him, he will try the +case; if not, let them forever be silent." In every essay that follows, +there are the same great odds and the same electric call to the youth +to face them. It is, indeed, as much a world of fable and romance that +Emerson introduces us to as we get in Homer or Herodotus. It is true, +all true,--true as Arthur and his knights, or Pilgrim's Progress, and I +pity the man who has not tasted its intoxication, or who can see nothing +in it. + +The intuitions are the bright band, without armor or shield, that +slay the mailed and bucklered giants of the understanding. Government, +institutions, religions, fall before the glance of the hero's eye. Art +and literature, Shakespeare, Angelo, Aeschylus, are humble suppliants +before you, the king. The commonest fact is idealized, and the whole +relation of man to the universe is thrown into a kind of gigantic +perspective. It is not much to say there is exaggeration; the very start +makes Mohammed's attitude toward the mountain tame. The mountain _shall_ +come to Mohammed, and, in the eyes of all born readers of Emerson, the +mountain does come, and comes with alacrity. + +Some shrewd judges apprehend that Emerson is not going to last; basing +their opinion upon the fact, already alluded to, that we outgrow him, or +pass through him as through an experience that we cannot repeat. He is +but a bridge to other things; he gets you over. He is an exceptional +fact in literature, say they, and does not represent lasting or +universal conditions. He is too fine for the rough wear and tear of +ages. True, we do not outgrow Dante, or Cervantes, or Bacon; and I doubt +if the Anglo-Saxon stock at least ever outgrows that king of romancers, +Walter Scott. These men and their like appeal to a larger audience, and +in some respects a more adult one, at least one more likely to be found +in every age and people. Their achievement was more from the common +level of human nature than are Emerson's astonishing paradoxes. Yet I +believe his work has the seal of immortality upon it as much as that +of any of them. No doubt he has a meaning to us now and in this country +that will be lost to succeeding time. His religious significance will +not be so important to the next generation. He is being or has been so +completely absorbed by his times, that readers and hearers hereafter +will get him from a thousand sources, or his contribution will become +the common property of the race. All the masters probably had some +peculiar import or tie to their contemporaries that we at a distance +miss. It is thought by scholars that we have lost the key, or one key, +to Dante, and Chaucer, and Shakespeare,--the key or the insight that +people living under the same roof get of each other. + +But, aside from and over and above everything else, Emerson _appeals +to youth and to genius._ If you have these, you will understand him and +delight in him; if not, or neither of them, you will make little of him. +And I do not see why this should not be just as true any time hence as +at present. + + + + +X THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE + + TO WALT WHITMAN + + "'I, thirty-six years old, in perfect health, begin, + Hoping to cease not till death.'" + CHANTS DEMOCRATIC. + + + "They say that thou art sick, art growing old, + Thou Poet of unconquerable health, + With youth far-stretching, through the golden wealth + Of autumn, to Death's frostful, friendly cold. + The never-blenching eyes, that did behold + Life's fair and foul, with measureless content, + And gaze ne'er sated, saddened as they bent + Over the dying soldier in the fold + Of thy large comrade love;--then broke the tear! + War-dream, field-vigil, the bequeathed kiss, + Have brought old age to thee; yet, Master, now, + Cease not thy song to us; lest we should miss + A death-chant of indomitable cheer, + Blown as a gale from God;--oh sing it thou!" + ARRAN LEIGH (England). + +I + +Whoever has witnessed the flight of any of the great birds, as the +eagle, the condor, the sea-gulls, the proud hawks, has perhaps felt that +the poetic suggestion of the feathered tribes is not all confined to the +sweet and tiny songsters,--the thrushes, canaries, and mockingbirds of +the groves and orchards, or of the gilded cage in my lady's chamber. +It is by some such analogy that I would indicate the character of the +poetry I am about to discuss, compared with that of the more popular and +melodious singer,--the poetry of the strong wing and the daring flight. + +Well and profoundly has a Danish critic said, in "For Ide og +Virkelighed" ("For the Idea and the Reality"), a Copenhagen magazine:-- + +"It may be candidly admitted that the American poet has not the +elegance, special melody, nor _recherche_ aroma of the accepted poets +of Europe or his own country; but his compass and general harmony are +infinitely greater. The sweetness and spice, the poetic _ennui,_ the +tender longings, the exquisite art-finish of those choice poets are +mainly unseen and unmet in him,--perhaps because he cannot achieve them, +more likely because he disdains them. But there is an electric _living +soul_ in his poetry, far more fermenting and bracing. His wings do not +glitter in their movement from rich and varicolored plumage, nor are his +notes those of the accustomed song-birds; but his flight is the flight +of the eagle." + +Yes, there is not only the delighting of the ear with the outpouring of +sweetest melody and its lessons, but there is the delighting of the eye +and soul through that soaring and circling in the vast empyrean of "a +strong bird on pinions free,"--lessons of freedom, power, grace, and +spiritual suggestion,--vast, unparalleled, _formless_ lessons. + +It is now upwards of twenty years since Walt Whitman printed (in 1855) +his first thin beginning volume of "Leaves of Grass;" and, holding him +to the test which he himself early proclaimed, namely, "that the proof +of the poet shall be sternly deferred till his country has absorb'd him +as affectionately as he has absorb'd it," he is yet on trial, yet +makes his appeal to an indifferent or to a scornful audience. That his +complete absorption, however, by his own country and by the world, is +ultimately to take place, is one of the beliefs that grows stronger and +stronger within me as time passes, and I suppose it is with a hope to +help forward this absorption that I write of him now. Only here and +there has he yet effected a lodgment, usually in the younger and +more virile minds. But considering the unparalleled audacity of his +undertaking, and the absence in most critics and readers of anything +like full-grown and robust aesthetic perception, the wonder really is +not that he should have made such slow progress, but that he should have +gained any foothold at all. The whole literary _technique_ of the race +for the last two hundred years has been squarely against him, laying, as +it does, the emphasis upon form and scholarly endowments instead of upon +aboriginal power and manhood. + +My own mastery of the poet, incomplete as it is, has doubtless been much +facilitated by contact--talks, meals, and jaunts--with him, stretching +through a decade of years, and by seeing how everything in his +_personnel_ was resumed and carried forward in his literary expression; +in fact, how the one was a living commentary upon the other. After the +test of time, nothing goes home like the test of actual intimacy; and to +tell me that Whitman is not a large, fine, fresh, magnetic personality, +making you love him and want always to be with him, were to tell me +that my whole past life is a deception, and all the impression of my +perceptive faculties a fraud. I have studied him as I have studied +the birds, and have found that the nearer I got to him the more I saw. +Nothing about a first-class man can be overlooked; he is to be studied +in every feature,--in his physiology and phrenology, in the shape of his +head, in his brow, his eye, his glance, his nose, his ear (the ear is +as indicative in a man as in a horse), his voice. In Whitman all these +things are remarkably striking and suggestive. His face exhibits a rare +combination of harmony and sweetness with strength,--strength like the +vaults and piers of the Roman architecture. Sculptor never carved a +finer ear or a more imaginative brow. Then his heavy-lidded, absorbing +eye, his sympathetic voice, and the impression which he makes of +starting from the broad bases of the universal human traits. (If Whitman +was grand in his physical and perfect health, I think him far more so +now (1877), cheerfully mastering paralysis, penury, and old age.) You +know, on seeing the man and becoming familiar with his presence, that, +if he achieve the height at all, it will be from where every man stands, +and not from some special genius, or exceptional and adventitious +point. He does not make the impression of the scholar or artist or +_litterateur,_ but such as you would imagine the antique heroes to +make,--that of a sweet-blooded, receptive, perfectly normal, catholic +man, with, further than that, a look about him that is best suggested by +the word elemental or cosmical. It was this, doubtless, that led Thoreau +to write, after an hour's interview, that he suggested "something a +little more than human." In fact, the main clew to Walt Whitman's life +and personality, and the expression of them in his poems, is to be found +in about the largest emotional element that has appeared anywhere. This, +if not controlled by a potent rational balance, would either have tossed +him helplessly forever, or wrecked him as disastrously as ever storm +and gale drove ship to ruin. These volcanic emotional fires appear +everywhere in his books; and it is really these, aroused to intense +activity and unnatural strain during the four years of the war and his +persistent labors in the hospitals, that have resulted in his illness +and paralysis since. + +It has been impossible, I say, to resist these personal impressions and +magnetisms, and impossible with me not to follow them up in the poems, +in doing which I found that his "Leaves of Grass" was really the _drama +of himself,_ played upon various and successive stages of nature, +history, passion, experience, patriotism, and that he had not made, +nor had he intended to make, mere excellent "poems," tunes, statues, or +statuettes, in the ordinary sense. + +Before the man's complete acceptance and assimilation by America, he +may have to be first passed down through the minds of critics and +commentators, and given to the people with some of his rank new quality +taken off,--a quality like that which adheres to objects in the open +air, and makes them either forbidding or attractive, as one's mood is +healthful and robust or feeble and languid. The processes are silently +at work. Already seen from a distance, and from other atmospheres and +surroundings, he assumes magnitude and orbic coherence; for in curious +contrast to the general denial of Whitman in this country (though he +has more lovers and admirers here than is generally believed) stands +the reception accorded him in Europe. The poets there, almost without +exception, recognize his transcendent quality, the men of science his +thorough scientific basis, the republicans his inborn democracy, and all +his towering picturesque personality and modernness. Professor Clifford +says he is more thoroughly in harmony with the spirit and letter of +advanced scientism than any other living poet. Professor Tyrrell and Mr. +Symonds find him eminently Greek, in the sense in which to be natural +and "self-regulated by the law of perfect health" is to be Greek. The +French "Revue des Deux Mondes" pronounces his war poems the most vivid, +the most humanly passionate, and the most modern, of all the verse of +the nineteenth century. Freiligrath translated him into German, and +hailed him as the founder of a new democratic and modern order of +poetry, greater than the old. But I do not propose to go over the whole +list here; I only wish to indicate that the absorption is well commenced +abroad, and that probably her poet will at last reach America by way of +those far-off, roundabout channels. The old mother will first masticate +and moisten the food which is still too tough for her offspring. + +When I first fell in with "Leaves of Grass," I was taken by isolated +passages scattered here and there through the poems; these I seized +upon, and gave myself no concern about the rest. Single lines in it +often went to the bottom of the questions that were vexing me. The +following, though less here than when encountered in the frame of mind +which the poet begets in you, curiously settled and stratified a certain +range of turbid, fluctuating inquiry:-- + + "There was never any more inception than there is now,-- + Nor any more youth or age than there is now; + And will never be any more perfection than there is now, + Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now." + +These lines, also, early had an attraction for me I could not define, +and were of great service:-- + + "Pleasantly and well-suited I walk, + Whither I walk I cannot define, but I know it is good, + The whole universe indicates that it is good, + The past and the present indicate that it is good." + +In the following episode, too, there was to me something far deeper than +the words or the story:-- + + "The runaway slave came to my house and stopt outside; + I heard his motions crackling the twigs of the wood-pile; + Through the swung half-door of the kitchen I saw him limpsy and weak, + And went where he sat on a log, and led him in, and assured him, + And brought water and fill'd a tub for his sweated body and + bruis'd feet, + And gave him a room that entered from my own, and gave him some + coarse clean clothes; + And remember perfectly well his revolving eyes and his awkwardness, + And remember putting plasters on the galls of his neck and ankles: + He stayed with me a week before he was recuperated and pass'd North; + (I had him sit next me at table--my firelock lean'd in the corner.)" + +But of the book as a whole I could form no adequate conception, and +it was not for many years, and after I had known the poet himself, as +already stated, that I saw in it a teeming, rushing globe well worthy my +best days and strength to surround and comprehend. + +One thing that early took me in the poems was (as before alluded to) the +tremendous personal force back of them, and felt through them as the +sun through vapor; not merely intellectual grasp or push, but a warm, +breathing, towering, magnetic Presence that there was no escape from. + +Another fact I was quick to perceive, namely, that this man had almost +in excess a quality in which every current poet was lacking,--I mean the +faculty of being in entire sympathy with actual nature, and the objects; +and shows of nature, and of rude, abysmal man; and appalling directness +of utterance therefrom, at first hand, without any intermediate agency +or modification. + +The influence of books and works of art upon an author may be seen in +all respectable writers. If knowledge alone made literature, or culture +genius, there would be no dearth of these things among the moderns. But +I feel bound to say that there is something higher and deeper than the +influence or perusal of any or all books, or all other productions of +genius,--a quality of information which the masters can never impart, +and which all the libraries do not hold. This is the absorption by an +author, previous to becoming so, of the spirit of nature, through +the visible objects of the universe, and his affiliation with them +subjectively and objectively. Not more surely is the blood quickened and +purified by contact with the unbreathed air than is the spirit of man +vitalized and made strong by intercourse with the real things of the +earth. The calm, all-permitting, wordless spirit of nature,--yet so +eloquent to him who hath ears to hear! The sunrise, the heaving sea, +the woods and mountains, the storm and the whistling winds, the gentle +summer day, the winter sights and sounds, the night and the high dome of +stars,--to have really perused these, especially from childhood onward, +till what there is in them, so impossible to define, finds its full mate +and echo in the mind,--this only is the lore which breathes the breath +of life into all the rest. Without it, literary productions may have the +superb beauty of statues, but with it only can they have the beauty of +life. + +I was never troubled at all by what the critics called Whitman's want +of art, or his violation of art. I saw that he at once designedly swept +away all which the said critics have commonly meant by that term. The +dominant impression was of the living presence and voice. He would have +no curtains, he said, not the finest, between himself and his reader; +and in thus bringing me face to face with his subject I perceived he +not only did not escape conventional art, but I perceived an enlarged, +enfranchised art in this very abnegation of art. "When half-gods go, +whole gods arrive." It was obvious to me that the new style gained more +than it lost, and that in this fullest operatic launching forth of the +voice, though it sounded strange at first, and required the ear to get +used to it, there might be quite as much science, and a good deal more +power, than in the tuneful but constricted measures we were accustomed +to. + +To the eye the page of the new poet presented about the same contrast +with the page of the popular poets that trees and the free, unbidden +growths of nature do with a carefully clipped hedge; and to the spirit +the contrast was about the same. The hedge is the more studiedly and +obviously beautiful, but, ah! there is a kind of beauty and satisfaction +in trees that one would not care to lose. There are symmetry and +proportion in the sonnet, but to me there is something I would not +exchange for them in the wild swing and balance of many free and +unrhymed passages in Shakespeare; like the one, for instance, in which +these lines occur:-- + + "To be imprisoned in the viewless winds, + And blown with restless violence round + About the pendent world." + +Here is the spontaneous grace and symmetry of a forest tree, or a +soughing mass of foliage. + +And this passage from my poet I do not think could be improved by the +verse-maker's art:-- + + "This day before dawn I ascended a hill and look'd at the crowded + heaven, + And I said to my Spirit, _When we become the enfolders of those orbs + and the pleasure and knowledge of everything in them, shall we be + fill'd and satisfied then?_ + And my Spirit said, No, _we but level that lift, to pass and continue + beyond."_ + +Such breaking with the routine poetic, and with the grammar of verse, +was of course a dangerous experiment, and threw the composer absolutely +upon his intrinsic merits, upon his innately poetic and rhythmic +quality. He must stand or fall by these alone, since he discarded all +artificial, all adventitious helps. If interior, spontaneous rhythm +could not be relied on, and the natural music and flexibility of +language, then there was nothing to shield the ear from the pitiless +hail of words,--not one softly padded verse anywhere. + +All poets, except those of the very first order, owe immensely to the +form, the art, the stereotyped metres, and stock figures they find ready +to hand. The form is suggestive,--it invites and aids expression, and +lends itself readily, like fashion, to conceal, or extenuate, or eke +out poverty of thought and feeling in the verse. The poet can "cut and +cover," as the farmer says, in a way the prose-writer never can, nor one +whose form is essentially prose, like Whitman's. + +I, too, love to see the forms worthily used, as they always are by the +master; and I have no expectation that they are going out of fashion +right away. A great deal of poetry that serves, and helps sweeten one's +cup, would be impossible without them,--would be nothing when separated +from them. It is for the ear, and for the sense of tune and of carefully +carved and modeled forms, and is not meant to arouse the soul with the +taste of power, and to start off on journeys for itself. But the great +inspired utterances, like the Bible,--what would they gain by being cast +in the moulds of metrical verse? In all that concerns art, viewed from +any high standpoint,--proportion, continence, self-control, unfaltering +adherence to natural standards, subordination of parts, perfect +adjustment of the means to the end, obedience to inward law, no +trifling, no levity, no straining after effect, impartially attending to +the back and loins as well as to the head, and even holding toward his +subject an attitude of perfect acceptance and equality,--principles +of art to which alone the great spirits are amenable,--in all these +respects, I say, this poet is as true as an orb in astronomy. + +To his literary expression pitched on scales of such unprecedented +breadth and loftiness, the contrast of his personal life comes in with a +foil of curious homeliness and simplicity. Perhaps never before has +the absolute and average _commonness of humanity_ been so steadily and +unaffectedly adhered to. I give here a glimpse of him in Washington on +a Navy Yard horse-car, toward the close of the war, one summer day at +sundown. The car is crowded and suffocatingly hot, with many passengers +on the rear platform, and among them a bearded, florid-faced man, +elderly but agile, resting against the dash, by the side of the young +conductor, and evidently his intimate friend. The man wears a broad-brim +white hat. Among the jam inside, near the door, a young Englishwoman, of +the working class, with two children, has had trouble all the way with +the youngest, a strong, fat, fretful, bright babe of fourteen or fifteen +months, who bids fair to worry the mother completely out, besides +becoming a howling nuisance to everybody. As the car tugs around Capitol +Hill the young one is more demoniac than ever, and the flushed and +perspiring mother is just ready to burst into tears with weariness and +vexation. The car stops at the top of the hill to let off most of the +rear platform passengers, and the white-hatted man reaches inside, and, +gently but firmly disengaging the babe from its stifling place in the +mother's arms, takes it in his own, and out in the air. The astonished +and excited child, partly in fear, partly in satisfaction at the change, +stops its screaming, and, as the man adjusts it more securely to his +breast, plants its chubby hands against him, and, pushing off as far +as it can, gives a good long look squarely in his face,--then, as if +satisfied, snuggles down with its head on his neck, and in less than a +minute is sound and peacefully asleep without another whimper, utterly +fagged out. A square or so more and the conductor, who has had an +unusually hard and uninterrupted day's work, gets off for his first +meal and relief since morning. And now the white-hatted man, holding +the slumbering babe, also acts as conductor the rest of the distance, +keeping his eye on the passengers inside, who have by this time thinned +out greatly. He makes a very good conductor, too, pulling the bell to +stop or to go on as needed, and seems to enjoy the occupation. The babe +meanwhile rests its fat cheeks close on his neck and gray beard, one of +his arms vigilantly surrounding it, while the other signals, from time +to time, with the strap; and the flushed mother inside has a good half +hour to breathe, and to cool and recover herself. + + + +II + +No poem of our day dates and locates itself as absolutely as "Leaves of +Grass;" but suppose it had been written three or four centuries ago, +and had located itself in mediaeval Europe, and was now first brought +to light, together with a history of Walt Whitman's simple and +disinterested life, can there be any doubt about the cackling that would +at once break out in the whole brood of critics over the golden egg that +had been uncovered? This reckon would be a favorite passage with all:-- + + "You sea! I resign myself to you also--I guess what you mean; + I behold from the beach your crooked inviting fingers; + I believe you refuse to go back without feeling of me; + We must have a turn together--I undress--hurry me out of sight of + the land; + Cushion me soft, rock me in billowy drowse; + Dash me with amorous wet--I can repay you. + + "Sea of stretch'd ground-swells! + Sea breathing broad and convulsive breaths! + Sea of the brine of life! sea of unshovel'd yet always ready graves! + Howler and scooper of storms! capricious and dainty sea! + I am integral with you--I too am of one phase, and of all phases." + +This other passage would afford many a text for the moralists and +essayists:-- + + "Of persons arrived at high positions, ceremonies, wealth, scholarship, + and the like; + To me, all that those persons have arrived at sinks away from them, + except as it results to their Bodies and Souls, + So that often, to me, they appear gaunt and naked, + And often, to me, each one mocks the others, and mocks himself + or herself, + And of each one, the core of life, namely happiness, is full of + the rotten excrement of maggots; + And often, to me, those men and women pass unwittingly the true + realities of life, and go toward false realities, + And often, to me, they are alive after what custom has served + them, but nothing more, + And often, to me, they are sad, hasty, unwaked somnambules, + walking the dusk." + +Ah, Time, you enchantress! what tricks you play with us! The old +is already proved,--the past and the distant hold nothing but the +beautiful. + +Or let us take another view. Suppose Walt Whitman had never existed, and +some bold essayist, like Mr. Higginson or Matthew Arnold, had projected +him in abstract, outlined him on a scholarly ideal background, +formulated and put in harmless critical periods the principles of art +which he illustrates, and which are the inevitable logic of his +poems,--said essayist would have won great applause. "Yes, indeed, that +were a poet to cherish; fill those shoes and you have a god." + +How different a critic's account of Shakespeare from Shakespeare +himself,--the difference between the hewn or sawed timber and the living +tree! A few years ago we had here a lecturer from over seas, who gave to +our well-dressed audiences the high, moral, and intellectual statement +of the poet Burns. It was very fine, and people were greatly pleased, +vastly more so, I fear, than they were with Burns himself. Indeed, I +could not help wondering how many of those appreciative listeners had +any original satisfaction in the Scotch poet at first hand, or would +have accepted him had he been their neighbor and fellow-citizen. But as +he filtered through the scholarly mind in trickling drops, oh, he was so +sweet! + +Everybody stirred with satisfaction as the lecturer said: "When +literature becomes dozy, respectable, and goes in the smooth grooves +of fashion, and copies and copies again, something must be done; and +to give life to that dying literature a man must be found _not educated +under its influence."_ I applauded with the rest, for it was a bold +saying; but I could not help thinking how that theory, brought home +to ourselves and illustrated in a living example, would have sent that +nodding millinery and faultless tailory flying downstairs, as at an +alarm of fire. + +One great service of Walt Whitman is that he exerts a tremendous +influence to bring the race up on this nether side,--to place the +emotional, the assimilative, the sympathetic, the spontaneous, intuitive +man, the man of the fluids and of the affections, flush with +the intellectual man. That we moderns have fallen behind here is +unquestionable, and we in this country more than the Old World peoples. +All the works of Whitman, prose and verse, are embosomed in a sea of +emotional humanity, and they float deeper than they show; there is far +more in what they necessitate and imply than in what they say. + +It is not so much of fatty degeneration that we are in danger in +America, but of calcareous. The fluids, moral and physical, are +evaporating; surfaces are becoming encrusted, there is a deposit of +flint in the veins and arteries, outlines are abnormally sharp and hard, +nothing is held in solution, all is precipitated in well-defined ideas +and opinions. + +But when I think of the type of character planted and developed by my +poet, I think of a man or a woman rich above all things in the genial +human attributes, one "nine times folded" in an atmosphere of tenderest, +most considerate humanity,--an atmosphere warm with the breath of a +tropic heart, that makes your buds of affection and of genius start and +unfold like a south wind in May. Your intercourse with such a character +is not merely intellectual; it is deeper and better than that. Walter +Scott carried such a fund of sympathy and goodwill that even the animals +found fellowship with him, and the pigs understood his great heart. + +It was the large endowment of Whitman, in his own character in this +respect, that made his services in the army hospitals during the war +so ministering and effective, and that renders his "Drum-Taps" the +tenderest and most deeply yearning and sorrowful expression of the human +heart in poetry that ever war called forth. Indeed, from my own point +of view, there is no false or dangerous tendency among us, in life or in +letters, that this poet does not offset and correct. Fret and chafe as +much as we will, we are bound to gravitate, more or less, toward this +mountain, and feel its bracing, rugged air. + +Without a certain self-surrender there is no greatness possible in +literature, any more than in religion, or in anything else. It is always +a trait of the master that he is not afraid of being compromised by +the company he keeps. He is the central and main fact in any company. +Nothing so lowly but he will do it reverence; nothing so high but he +can stand in its presence. His theme is the river, and he the ample and +willing channel. Little natures love to disparage and take down; they +do it in self-defense; but the master gives you all, and more than your +due. Whitman does not stand aloof, superior, a priest or a critic: he +abandons himself to all the strong human currents; he enters into and +affiliates with every phase of life; he bestows himself royally upon +whoever and whatever will receive him. There is no competition between +himself and his subject; he is not afraid of over-praising, or making +too much of the commonest individual. What exalts others exalts him. + +We have had great help in Emerson in certain ways,--first-class service. +He probes the conscience and the moral purpose as few men have done, and +gives much needed stimulus there. But, after him, the need is all the +more pressing for a broad, powerful, opulent, human personality to +absorb these ideals, and to make something more of them than fine +sayings. With Emerson alone we are rich in sunlight, but poor in +rain and dew,--poor, too, in soil, and in the moist, gestating earth +principle. Emerson's tendency is not to broaden and enrich, but to +concentrate and refine. + +Then, is there not an excessive modesty, without warrant in philosophy +or nature, dwindling us in this country, drying us up in the viscera? Is +there not a decay--a deliberate, strange abnegation and dread--of sane +sexuality, of maternity and paternity, among us, and in our literary +ideals and social types of men and women? For myself, I welcome any +evidence to the contrary, or any evidence that deeper and counteracting +agencies are at work, as unspeakably precious. I do not know where this +evidence is furnished in such ample measure as in the pages of +Walt Whitman. The great lesson of nature, I take it, is that a sane +sensuality must be preserved at all hazards, and this, it seems to me, +is also the great lesson of his writings. The point is fully settled in +him that, however they may have been held in abeyance or restricted to +other channels, there is still sap and fecundity, and depth of virgin +soil in the race, sufficient to produce a man of the largest mould and +the most audacious and unconquerable egotism, and on a plane the last to +be reached by these qualities; a man of antique stature, of Greek fibre +and gripe, with science and the modern added, without abating one jot or +tittle of his native force, adhesiveness, Americanism, and democracy. + +As I have already hinted, Whitman has met with by far his amplest +acceptance and appreciation in Europe. There is good reason for this, +though it is not what has been generally claimed, namely, that the +cultivated classes of Europe are surfeited with respectability, half +dead with _ennui_ and routine, and find an agreeable change in the +daring unconventionality of the new poet. For the fact is, it is not the +old and jaded minds of London, or Paris, or Dublin, or Copenhagen, that +have acknowledged him, but the fresh, eager, young minds. Nine tenths of +his admirers there are the sturdiest men in the fields of art, science, +and literature. + +In many respects, as a race, we Americans have been pampered and +spoiled; we have been brought up on sweets. I suppose that, speaking +literally, no people under the sun consume so much confectionery, so +much pastry and cake, or indulge in so many gassy and sugared drinks. +The soda-fountain, with its syrups, has got into literature, and +furnishes the popular standard of poetry. The old heroic stamina of our +ancestors, that craved the bitter but nourishing home-brewed, has died +out, and in its place there is a sickly cadaverousness that must be +pampered and cosseted. Among educated people here there is a mania for +the bleached, the double-refined,--white houses, white china, white +marble, and white skins. We take the bone and sinew out of the flour +in order to have white bread, and are bolting our literature as fast as +possible. + +It is for these and kindred reasons that Walt Whitman is more read +abroad than in his own country. It is on the rank, human, and +emotional side--sex, magnetism, health, physique,--that he is so +full. Then his receptivity and assimilative powers are enormous, and +he demands these in his reader. In fact, his poems are physiological as +much as they are intellectual. They radiate from his entire being, +and are charged to repletion with that blended quality of mind and +body--psychic and physiologic--which the living form and presence send +forth. Never before in poetry has the body received such ennoblement. +The great theme is IDENTITY, and identity comes through the body; and +all that pertains to the body, the poet teaches, is entailed upon +the spirit. In his rapt gaze, the body and the soul are one, and what +debases the one debases the other. Hence he glorifies the body. Not more +ardently and purely did the great sculptors of antiquity carve it in the +enduring marble than this poet has celebrated it in his masculine and +flowing lines. The bearing of his work in this direction is invaluable. +Well has it been said that the man or the woman who has "Leaves of +Grass" for a daily companion will be under the constant, invisible +influence of sanity, cleanliness, strength, and a gradual severance from +all that corrupts and makes morbid and mean. + +In regard to the unity and construction of the poems, the reader +sooner or later discovers the true solution to be, that the dependence, +cohesion, and final reconciliation of the whole are in the Personality +of the poet himself. As in Shakespeare everything is strung upon the +plot, the play, and loses when separated from it, so in this poet every +line and sentence refers to and necessitates the Personality behind it, +and derives its chief significance therefrom. In other words, "Leaves of +Grass" is essentially a dramatic poem, a free representation of man in +his relation to the outward world,--the play, the interchanges between +him and it, apart from social and artificial considerations,--in which +we discern the central purpose or thought to be for every man and woman +his or her Individuality, and around that, Nationality. To show rather +than to tell,--to body forth as in a play how these arise and blend; how +the man is developed and recruited, his spirit's descent; how he walks +through materials absorbing and conquering them; how he confronts the +immensities of time and space; where are the true sources of his power, +the soul's real riches,--that which "adheres and goes forward and is not +dropped by death;" how he is all defined and published and made certain +through his body; the value of health and physique; the great solvent, +Sympathy,--to show the need of larger and fresher types in art and in +life, and then how the state is compacted, and how the democratic idea +is ample and composite, and cannot fail us,--to show all this, I +say, not as in a lecture or a critique, but suggestively and +inferentially,--to work it out freely and picturesquely, with endless +variations, with person and picture and parable and adventure, is the +lesson and object of "Leaves of Grass." From the first line, where the +poet says, + + "I loafe and invite my Soul," + +to the last, all is movement and fusion,--all is clothed in flesh and +blood. The scene changes, the curtain rises and falls, but the theme is +still Man,--his opportunities, his relations, his past, his future, his +sex, his pride in himself, his omnivorousness, his "great hands," his +yearning heart, his seething brain, the abysmal depths that underlie him +and open from him, all illustrated in the poet's own character,--he the +chief actor always. His personality directly facing you, and with its +eye steadily upon you, runs through every page, spans all the details, +and rounds and completes them, and compactly holds them. This gives the +form and the art conception, and gives homogeneousness. + +When Tennyson sends out a poem, it is perfect, like an apple or a peach; +slowly wrought out and dismissed, it drops from his boughs holding +a conception or an idea that spheres it and makes it whole. It is +completed, distinct, and separate,--might be his, or might be any man's. +It carries his quality, but it is a thing of itself, and centres and +depends upon itself. Whether or not the world will hereafter consent, +as in the past, to call only beautiful creations of this sort _poems,_ +remains to be seen. But this is certainly not what Walt Whitman does, +or aims to do, except in a few cases. He completes no poems apart and +separate from himself, and his pages abound in hints to that effect:-- + + "Let others finish specimens--I never finish specimens; + I shower them by exhaustless laws, as Nature does, fresh + and modern continually." + +His lines are pulsations, thrills, waves of force, indefinite dynamics, +formless, constantly emanating from the living centre, and they carry +the quality of the author's personal presence with them in a way that is +unprecedented in literature. + +Occasionally there is a poem or a short piece that detaches itself, +and assumes something like ejaculatory and statuesque proportion, as +"O Captain, my Captain," "Pioneers," "Beat, Beat, Drums," and others in +"Drum-Taps;" but all the great poems, like "Walt Whitman," "Song of +the Open Road," "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry," "To Working Men," +"Sleep-Chasings," etc., are out-flamings, out-rushings, of the pent +fires of the poet's soul. The first-named poem, which is the seething, +dazzling sun of his subsequent poetic system, shoots in rapid succession +waves of almost consuming energy. It is indeed a central orb of fiercest +light and heat, swept by wild storms of emotion, but at the same time +of sane and beneficent potentiality. Neither in it nor in either of +the others is there the building-up of a fair verbal structure, +a symmetrical piece of mechanism, whose last stone is implied and +necessitated in the first. + +"The critic's great error," says Heine, "lies in asking, 'What ought +the artist to do?' It would be far more correct to ask, 'What does the +artist intend?'" + +It is probably partly because his field is so large, his demands +so exacting, his method so new (necessarily so), and from the whole +standard of the poems being what I may call an astronomical one, that +the critics complain so generally of want of form in him. And the +critics are right enough, as far as their objection goes. There is no +deliberate form here, any more than there is in the forces of nature. +Shall we say, then, that nothing but the void exists? The void is filled +by a Presence. There is a controlling, directing, overarching will +in every page, every verse, that there is no escape from. Design and +purpose, natural selection, growth, culmination, are just as pronounced +as in any poet. + +There is a want of form in the unfinished statue, because it is +struggling into form; it is nothing without form; but there is no want +of form in the elemental laws and effusions,--in fire, or water, or +rain, or dew, or the smell of the shore or the plunging waves. And may +there not be the analogue of this in literature,--a potent, quickening, +exhilarating quality in words, apart from and without any consideration +of constructive form? Under the influence of the expansive, creative +force that plays upon me from these pages, like sunlight or gravitation, +the question of form never comes up, because I do not for one moment +escape the eye, the source from which the power and action emanate. + +I know that Walt Whitman has written many passages with reference far +more to their position, interpretation, and scanning ages hence, than +for current reading. Much of his material is too near us; it needs time. +Seen through the vista of long years, perhaps centuries, it will assume +quite different hues. Perhaps those long lists of trades, tools, and +occupations would not be so repellent if we could read them, as we read +Homer's catalogue of the ships, through the retrospect of ages. They are +justified in the poem aside from their historic value, because they +are alive and full of action,--panoramas of the whole mechanical and +industrial life of America, north, east, south, west,--bits of scenery, +bird's-eye views, glimpses of moving figures, caught as by a flash, +characteristic touches indoors and out, all passing in quick succession +before you. They have in the fullest measure what Lessing demands in +poetry,--the quality of ebbing and flowing action, as distinct from the +dead water of description; they are thoroughly dramatic, fused, pliant, +and obedient to the poet's will. No glamour is thrown over them, no wash +of sentiment; and if they have not the charm of novelty and distance, +why, that is an accident that bars them in a measure to us, but not to +the future. Very frequently in these lists or enumerations of objects, +actions, shows, there are sure to occur lines of perfect description:-- + + "Where the heifers browse--where geese nip their food with short + jerks; + Where sun-down shadows lengthen over the limitless and lonesome + prairie; + Where herds of buffalo make a crawling spread of the square miles + far and near; + Where the splash of swimmers and divers cools the warm noon; + Where the katydid works her chromatic reed on the walnut-tree + over the well." + + "Spar-makers in the spar-yard, the swarming row of well-grown + apprentices, + The swing of their axes on the square-hew'd log, shaping it toward + the shape of a mast, + The brisk short crackle of the steel driven slantingly into the pine, + The butter-color'd chips flying off in great flakes and slivers, + The limber motion of brawny young arms and hips in easy costumes." + + "Always these compact lands--lands tied at the hips with the belt + stringing the huge oval lakes." + + "Far breath'd land! Arctic braced! Mexican breez'd!--the diverse! + the compact!" + +Tried by the standards of the perfect statuesque poems, these pages will +indeed seem strange enough; but viewed as a part of the poetic +compend of America, the swift gathering-in, from her wide-spreading, +multitudinous, material life, of traits and points and suggestions that +belong here and are characteristic, they have their value. The poet +casts his great seine into events and doings and material progress, +and these are some of the fish, not all beautiful by any means, but all +terribly alive, and all native to these waters. + +In the "Carol of Occupations" occur, too, those formidable inventories +of the more heavy and coarsegrained trades and tools that few if any +readers have been able to stand before, and that have given the scoffers +and caricaturists their favorite weapons. If you detach a page of these +and ask, "Is it poetry? have the 'hog-hook,' the 'killing-hammer,' 'the +cutter's cleaver,' 'the packer's maul,' met with a change of heart, and +been converted into celestial cutlery?" I answer, No, they are as barren +of poetry as a desert is of grass; but in their place in the poem, and +in the collection, they serve as masses of shade or neutral color in +pictures, or in nature, or in character,--a negative service, but still +indispensable. The point, the moral of the poem, is really backed up +and driven home by this list. The poet is determined there shall be +no mistake about it. He will not put in the dainty and pretty things +merely,--he will put in the coarse and common things also, and he swells +the list till even his robust muse begins to look uneasy. Remember, too, +that Whitman declaredly writes the lyrics of America, of the masses, +of democracy, and of the practical labor of mechanics, boatmen, and +farmers:-- + + "The sum of all known reverence I add up in you, whoever you are; + All doctrines, all politics and civilization, exude from you; + All sculpture and monuments, and anything inscribed anywhere, are + tallied in you; + The gist of histories and statistics as far back as the records + reach, is in you this hour, and myths and tales the same: + If you were not breathing and walking here, where would they + all be? + The most renown'd poems would be ashes, orations and plays would + be vacuums. + + "All architecture is what you do to it when you look upon it; + (Did you think it was in the white or gray stone? or the lines of + the arches and cornices?) + + "All music is what awakens from you when you are reminded by the + instruments; + It is not the violins and the cornets--it is not the oboe, nor + the beating drums--nor the score of the baritone singer singing + his sweet romanza--nor that of the men's chorus, nor that of + the women's chorus, + It is nearer and farther than they." + +Out of this same spirit of reverence for man and all that pertains +essentially to him, and the steady ignoring of conventional and social +distinctions and prohibitions, and on the same plane as the universal +brotherhood of the poems, come those passages in "Leaves of Grass" that +have caused so much abuse and fury,--the allusions to sexual acts and +organs,--the momentary contemplation of man as the perpetuator of his +species. Many good judges, who have followed Whitman thus far, stop here +and refuse their concurrence. But if the poet has failed in this part, +he has failed in the rest. It is of a piece with the whole. He has felt +in his way the same necessity as that which makes the anatomist or +the physiologist not pass by, or neglect, or falsify, the loins of his +typical personage. All the passages and allusions that come under this +head have a scientific coldness and purity, but differ from science, as +poetry always must differ, in being alive and sympathetic, instead of +dead and analytic. There is nothing of the forbidden here, none of those +sweet morsels that we love to roll under the tongue, such as are found +in Byron and Shakespeare, and even in austere Dante. If the fact is not +lifted up and redeemed by the solemn and far-reaching laws of maternity +and paternity, through which the poet alone contemplates it, then it +is irredeemable, and one side of our nature is intrinsically vulgar and +mean. + +Again: Out of all the full-grown, first-class poems, no matter what +their plot or theme, emerges a sample of Man, each after its kind, its +period, its nationality, its antecedents. The vast and cumbrous Hindu +epics contribute their special types of both man and woman, impossible +except from far-off Asia and Asian antiquity. Out of Homer, after all +his gorgeous action and events, the distinct personal identity, the +heroic and warlike chieftain of Hellas only permanently remains. In the +same way, when the fire and fervor of Shakespeare's plots and passions +subside, the special feudal personality, as lord or gentleman, still +towers in undying vitality. Even the Sacred Writings themselves, +considered as the first great poems, leave on record, out of all the +rest, the portraiture of a characteristic Oriental Man. Far different +from these (and yet, as he says, "the same old countenance pensively +looking forth," and "the same red running blood"), "Leaves of Grass" +and "Two Rivulets" also bring their contribution; nay, behind every page +_that_ is the main purport,--to outline a New World Man and a New +World Woman, modern, complete, democratic, not only fully and nobly +intellectual and spiritual, but in the same measure physical, emotional, +and even fully and nobly carnal. + +An acute person once said to me, "As I read and re-read these poems, I +more and more think their inevitable result in time must be to produce + + 'A race of splendid and savage _old men,_' + +of course dominated by moral and spiritual laws, but with volcanoes of +force always alive beneath the surface." + +And still again: One of the questions to be put to any poem assuming a +first-class importance among us--and I especially invite this inquiry +toward "Leaves of Grass"--is, How far is this work consistent with, and +the outcome of, that something which secures to the race ascendency, +empire, and perpetuity? There is in every dominant people a germ, a +quality, an expansive force, that, no matter how it is overlaid, gives +them their push and their hold upon existence,--writes their history +upon the earth, and stamps their imprint upon the age. To what extent is +your masterpiece the standard-bearer of this quality,--helping the race +to victory? helping me to be more myself than I otherwise would? + + + +III + +Not the least of my poet's successes is in his thorough assimilation of +the modern sciences, transmuting them into strong poetic nutriment, and +in the extent to which all his main poems are grounded in the deepest +principles of modern philosophical inquiry. + +Nearly all the old literatures may be said to have been founded upon +fable, and upon a basis and even superstructure of ignorance, that, +however charming it may be, we have not now got, and could not keep if +we had. The bump of wonder and the feeling of the marvelous,--a kind +of half-pleasing fear, like that of children in the dark or in the +woods,--were largely operative with the old poets, and I believe are +necessary to any eminent success in this field; but they seem nearly to +have died out of the modern mind, like organs there is no longer any +use for. The poetic temperament has not yet adjusted itself to the new +lights, to science, and to the vast fields and expanses opened up in +the physical cosmos by astronomy and geology, and in the spiritual or +intellectual world by the great German metaphysicians. The staple of +a large share of our poetic literature is yet mainly the result of the +long age of fable and myth that now lies behind us. "Leaves of Grass" +is, perhaps, the first serious and large attempt at an expression in +poetry of a knowledge of the earth as one of the orbs, and of man as +a microcosm of the whole, and to give to the imagination these new and +true fields of wonder and romance. In it fable and superstition are at +an end, priestcraft is at an end, skepticism and doubt are at an end, +with all the misgivings and dark forebodings that have dogged the human +mind since it began to relax its hold upon tradition and the past; and +we behold man reconciled, happy, ecstatic, full of reverence, awe, and +wonder, reinstated in Paradise,--the paradise of perfect knowledge and +unrestricted faith. + +It needs but a little pondering to see that the great poet of the future +will not be afraid of science, but will rather seek to plant his feet +upon it as upon a rock. He knows that, from an enlarged point of view, +there is no feud between Science and Poesy, any more than there is +between Science and Religion, or between Science and Life. He sees that +the poet and the scientist do not travel opposite but parallel roads, +that often approach each other very closely, if they do not at times +actually join. The poet will always pause when he finds himself in +opposition to science; and the scientist is never more worthy the name +than when he escapes from analysis into synthesis, and gives us living +wholes. And science, in its present bold and receptive mood, may be said +to be eminently creative, and to have made every first-class thinker and +every large worker in any aesthetic or spiritual field immeasurably +its debtor. It has dispelled many illusions, but it has more than +compensated the imagination by the unbounded vistas it has opened up +on every hand. It has added to our knowledge, but it has added to our +ignorance in the same measure: the large circle of light only reveals +the larger circle of darkness that encompasses it, and life and being +and the orbs are enveloped in a greater mystery to the poet to-day than +they were in the times of Homer or Isaiah. Science, therefore, does not +restrict the imagination, but often compels it to longer flights. +The conception of the earth as an orb shooting like a midnight meteor +through space, a brand cast by the burning sun with the fire at its +heart still unquenched, the sun itself shooting and carrying the whole +train of worlds with it, no one knows whither,--what a lift has science +given the imagination in this field! Or the tremendous discovery of the +correlation and conservation of forces, the identity and convertibility +of heat and force and motion, and that no ounce of power is lost, +but forever passed along, changing form but not essence, is a poetic +discovery no less than a scientific one. The poets have always felt +that it must be so, and, when the fact was authoritatively announced by +science, every profound poetic mind must have felt a thrill of pleasure. +Or the nebular hypothesis of the solar system,--it seems the conception +of some inspired madman, like William Blake, rather than the cool +conclusion of reason, and to carry its own justification, as great +power always does. Indeed, our interest in astronomy and geology is +essentially a poetic one,--the love of the marvelous, of the sublime, +and of grand harmonies. The scientific conception of the sun is +strikingly Dantesque, and appalls the imagination. Or the hell of fire +through which the earth has passed, and the aeons of monsters from which +its fair forms have emerged,--from which of the seven circles of the +Inferno did the scientist get his hint? Indeed, science everywhere +reveals a carnival of mightier gods than those that cut such fantastic +tricks in the ancient world. Listen to Tyndall on light, or to Youmans +on the chemistry of a sunbeam, and see how fable pales its ineffectual +fires, and the boldest dreams of the poets are eclipsed. + +The vibratory theory of light and its identity with the laws of sound, +the laws of the tides and the seasons, the wonders of the spectroscope, +the theory of gravitation, of electricity, of chemical affinity, the +deep beneath deep of the telescope, the world within world of the +microscope,--in these and many other fields it is hard to tell whether +it is the scientist or the poet we are listening to. What greater magic +than that you can take a colorless ray of light, break it across a +prism, and catch upon a screen all the divine hues of the rainbow? + +In some respects science has but followed out and confirmed the dim +foreshadowings of the human breast. Man in his simplicity has called the +sun father and the earth mother. Science shows this to be no fiction, +but a reality; that we are really children of the sun, and that every +heart-beat, every pound of force we exert, is a solar emanation. The +power with which you now move and breathe came from the sun just as +literally as the bank-notes in your pocket came from the bank. + +The ancients fabled the earth as resting upon the shoulders of Atlas, +and Atlas as standing upon a turtle; but what the turtle stood upon was +a puzzle. An acute person says that science has but changed the terms +of the equation, but that the unknown quantity is the same as ever. The +earth now rests upon the sun,--in his outstretched palm; the sun rests +upon some other sun, and that upon some other; but what they all finally +rest upon, who can tell? Well may Tennyson speak of the "fairy tales of +science," and well may Walt Whitman say:-- + + "I lie abstracted, and hear beautiful tales of things, and the + reasons of things; + They are so beautiful, I nudge myself to listen." + +But, making all due acknowledgments to science, there is one danger +attending it that the poet alone can save us from,--the danger that +science, absorbed with its great problems, will forget Man. Hence the +especial office of the poet with reference to science is to endow +it with a human interest. The heart has been disenchanted by having +disclosed to it blind, abstract forces where it had enthroned personal +humanistic divinities. In the old time, man was the centre of the +system; everything was interested in him, and took sides for or against +him. There were nothing but men and gods in the universe. But in the +results of science the world is more and more, and man is less and +less. The poet must come to the rescue, and place man again at the top, +magnify him, exalt him, reinforce him, and match these wonders from +without with equal wonders from within. Welcome to the bard who is not +appalled by the task, and who can readily assimilate and turn into +human emotions these vast deductions of the savants! The minor poets do +nothing in this direction; only men of the largest calibre and the most +heroic fibre are adequate to the service. Hence one finds in Tennyson a +vast deal more science than he would at first suspect; but it is under +his feet; it is no longer science, but faith, or reverence, or poetic +nutriment. It is in "Locksley Hall," "The Princess," "In Memoriam," +"Maud," and in others of his poems. Here is a passage from "In +Memoriam:"-- + + "They say, + The solid earth whereon we tread + + "In tracts of fluent heat began, + And grew to seeming-random forms, + The seeming prey of cyclic storms, + Till at the last arose the man; + + "Who throve and branch'd from clime to clime, + The herald of a higher race, + And of himself in higher place + If so he type this work of time + + "Within himself, from more to more; + Or, crown'd with attributes of woe, + Like glories, move his course, and show + That life is not as idle ore, + + "But iron dug from central gloom, + And heated hot with burning fears, + And dipt in baths of hissing tears, + And batter'd with the shocks of doom + + "To shape and use. Arise and fly + The reeling Faun, the sensual feast; + Move upward, working out the beast, + And let the ape and tiger die." + +Or in this stanza behold how the science is disguised or turned into the +sweetest music:-- + + "Move eastward, happy earth, and leave + Yon orange sunset waning slow; + From fringes of the faded eve, + O happy planet, eastward go; + Till over thy dark shoulder glow + Thy silver sister-world, and rise + To glass herself in dewy eyes + That watch me from the glen below." + +A recognition of the planetary system, and of the great fact that +the earth moves eastward through the heavens, in a soft and tender +love-song! + +But in Walt Whitman alone do we find the full, practical absorption, and +re-departure therefrom, of the astounding idea that the earth is a star +in the heavens like the rest, and that man, as the crown and finish, +carries in his moral consciousness the flower, the outcome, of all this +wide field of turbulent unconscious nature. Of course in his handling it +is no longer science, or rather it is science dissolved in the fervent +heat of the poet's heart, and charged with emotion. "The words of true +poems," he says, "are the tufts and final applause of science." Before +Darwin or Spencer he proclaimed the doctrine of evolution:-- + + "I am stuccoed with quadrupeds and birds all over, + And have distanced what is behind me for good reasons, + And call anything close again when I desire it. + + "In vain the speeding and shyness; + In vain the plutonic rocks send their old heat against my approach; + In vain the mastodon retreats beneath his own powder'd bones; + In vain objects stand leagues off, and assume manifold shapes; + In vain the ocean settling in hollows, and the great monsters + lying low." + +In the following passage the idea is more fully carried out, and man +is viewed through a vista which science alone has laid open; yet how +absolutely a work of the creative imagination is revealed:-- + + "I am an acme of things accomplish'd, and I am incloser of things + to be. + My feet strike an apex of the apices of the stairs; + On every step bunches of ages, and larger bunches between the + steps; + All below duly travel'd, and still I mount and mount. + + "Rise after rise bow the phantoms behind me; + Afar down I see the huge first Nothing--I know I was even there; + I waited unseen and always, and slept through the lethargic mist, + And took my time, and took no hurt from the foetid carbon. + + "Long I was hugg'd close--long and long, + Immense have been the preparations for me, + Faithful and friendly the arms that have help'd me, + Cycles ferried my cradle, rowing and rowing like cheerful + boatmen; + For room to me stars kept aside in their own rings; + They sent influences to look after what was to hold me. + + "Before I was born out of my mother, generations guided me; + My embryo has never been torpid--nothing could overlay it, + For it the nebula cohered to an orb, + The long low strata piled to rest it on, + Vast vegetables gave it sustenance, + Monstrous sauroids transported it in their mouths, and deposited + it with care; + All forces have been steadily employ'd to complete and delight + me: + Now on this spot I stand with my robust Soul." + +I recall no single line of poetry in the language that fills my +imagination like that beginning the second stanza:-- + + "Rise after rise bow the phantoms behind me." + +One seems to see those huge Brocken shadows of the past sinking and +dropping below the horizon like mountain peaks, as he presses onward on +his journey. Akin to this absorption of science is another quality in +my poet not found in the rest, except perhaps a mere hint of it now and +then in Lucretius,--a quality easier felt than described. It is a tidal +wave of emotion running all through the poems, which is now and then +crested with such passages as this:-- + + "I am he that walks with the tender and growing night; + I call to the earth and sea, half held by the night. + + "Press close, bare-bosom'd night! Press close, magnetic, + nourishing night! + Night of south winds! night of the large, few stars! + Still, nodding night! mad, naked, summer night. + + "Smile, O voluptuous, cool-breath'd earth! + Earth of the slumbering and liquid trees! + Earth of departed sunset! Earth of the mountains, misty topt! + Earth of the vitreous pour of the full moon, just tinged with + blue! + Earth of shine and dark, mottling the tide of the river! + Earth of the limpid gray of clouds, brighter and clearer for my + sake! + Far-swooping, elbow'd earth! rich, apple-blossom'd earth! + Smile, for your lover comes!" + +Professor Clifford calls it "cosmic emotion,"--a poetic thrill and +rhapsody in contemplating the earth as a whole,--its chemistry and +vitality, its bounty, its beauty, its power, and the applicability +of its laws and principles to human, aesthetic, and art products. It +affords the key to the theory of art upon which Whitman's poems are +projected, and accounts for what several critics call their sense of +magnitude,--"something of the vastness of the succession of objects in +Nature." + + "I swear there is no greatness or power that does not emulate those + of the earth! + I swear there can be no theory of any account, unless it corroborate + the theory of the earth! + No politics, art, religion, behavior, or what not, is of account, + unless it compare with the amplitude of the earth, + Unless it face the exactness, vitality, impartiality, rectitude + of the earth." + +Or again, in his "Laws for Creation:"-- + + "All must have reference to the ensemble of the world, and the + compact truth of the world, + There shall be no subject too pronounced--All works shall illustrate + the divine law of indirections." + +Indeed, the earth ever floats in this poet's mind as his mightiest +symbol,--his type of completeness and power. It is the armory from which +he draws his most potent weapons. See, especially, "To the Sayers of +Words," "This Compost," "The Song of the Open Road," and "Pensive on her +Dead gazing I heard the Mother of all." + +The poet holds essentially the same attitude toward cosmic humanity, +well illustrated in "Salut au Monde:"-- + + "My spirit has pass'd in compassion and determination around the + whole earth; + I have look'd for equals and lovers, and found them ready for me + in all lands; + I think some divine rapport has equalized me with them. + + "O vapors! I think I have risen with you and moved away to distant + continents, and fallen down there for reasons; + I think I have blown with you, O winds; + O waters, I have finger'd every shore with you." + +Indeed, the whole book is leavened with vehement Comradeship. Not only +in the relations of individuals to each other shall loving good-will +exist and be cultivated,--not only between the different towns and +cities, and all the States of this indissoluble, compacted Union,--but +it shall make a tie of fraternity and fusion holding all the races and +peoples and countries of the whole earth. + +Then the National question. As Whitman's completed works now stand, in +their two volumes, it is certain they could only have grown out of the +Secession War; and they will probably go to future ages as in literature +the most characteristic identification of that war,--risen from +and portraying it, representing its sea of passions and progresses, +partaking of all its fierce movements and perturbed emotions, and yet +sinking the mere military parts of that war, great as those were, below +and with matters far greater, deeper, more human, more expanding, and +more enduring. + +I must not close this paper without some reference to Walt Whitman's +prose writings, which are scarcely less important than his poems. Never +has Patriotism, never has the antique Love of Country, with even +doubled passion and strength, been more fully expressed than in these +contributions. They comprise two thin volumes,--now included in "Two +Rivulets,"--called "Democratic Vistas" and "Memoranda during the War;" +the former exhibiting the personality of the poet in more vehement +and sweeping action even than do the poems, and affording specimens of +soaring vaticination and impassioned appeal impossible to match in the +literature of our time. The only living author suggested is Carlyle; but +so much is added, the _presence_ is so much more vascular and human, and +the whole page so saturated with faith and love and democracy, that even +the great Scotchman is overborne. Whitman, too, radiates belief, while +at the core of Carlyle's utterances is despair. The style here is +eruptive and complex, or what Jeremy Taylor calls _agglomerative,_ and +puts the Addisonian models utterly to rout,--a style such as only the +largest and most Titanic workman could effectively use. A sensitive lady +of my acquaintance says reading the "Vistas" is like being exposed to +a pouring hailstorm,--the words fairly bruise her mind. In its literary +construction the book is indeed a shower, or a succession of showers, +multitudinous, wide-stretching, down-pouring,--the wrathful bolt and the +quick veins of poetic fire lighting up the page from time to time. I +can easily conceive how certain minds must be swayed and bent by some +of these long, involved, but firm and vehement passages. I cannot deny +myself the pleasure of quoting one or two pages. The writer is referring +to the great literary relics of past times:-- + +"For us, along the great highways of time, those monuments stand,--those +forms of majesty and beauty. For us those beacons burn through all the +nights. Unknown Egyptians, graving hieroglyphs; Hindus, with hymn and +apothegm and endless epic; Hebrew prophet, with spirituality, as in +flames of lightning, conscience like red-hot iron, plaintive songs and +screams of vengeance for tyrannies and enslavement; Christ, with bent +head, brooding love and peace, like a dove; Greek, creating eternal +shapes of physical and aesthetic proportion; Roman, lord of satire, the +sword, and the codex,--of the figures, some far off and veiled, others +near and visible; Dante, stalking with lean form, nothing but fibre, +not a grain of superfluous flesh; Angelo, and the great painters, +architects, musicians; rich Shakespeare, luxuriant as the sun, artist +and singer of Feudalism in its sunset, with all the gorgeous colors, +owner thereof, and using them at will;--and so to such as German Kant +and Hegel, where they, though near us, leaping over the ages, sit again, +impassive, imperturbable, like the Egyptian gods. Of these, and the like +of these, is it too much, indeed, to return to our favorite figure, +and view them as orbs, moving in free paths in the spaces of that other +heaven, the cosmic intellect, the Soul? + +"Ye powerful and resplendent ones! ye were, in your atmospheres, grown +not for America, but rather for her foes, the Feudal and the old--while +our genius is democratic and modern. Yet could ye, indeed, but breathe +your breath of life into our New World's nostrils--not to enslave us as +now, but, for our needs, to breed a spirit like your own--perhaps (dare +we to say it?) to dominate, even destroy what you yourselves have left! +On your plane, and no less, but even higher and wider, will I mete and +measure for our wants to-day and here. I demand races of orbic bards, +with unconditional, uncompromising sway. Come forth, sweet democratic +despots of the west!" + +Here is another passage of a political cast, but showing the same great +pinions and lofty flight:-- + +"It seems as if the Almighty had spread before this nation charts of +imperial destinies, dazzling as the sun, yet with lines of blood, and +many a deep intestine difficulty, and human aggregate of cankerous +imperfection,--saying, Lo! the roads, the only plans of development, +long, and varied with all terrible balks and ebullitions. You said in +your soul, I will be empire of empires, overshadowing all else, past and +present, putting the history of Old World dynasties, conquests, behind +me as of no account,--making a new history, the history of Democracy, +making old history a dwarf,--I alone inaugurating largeness, culminating +time. If these, O lands of America, are indeed the prizes, the +determinations of your Soul, be it so. But behold the cost, and already +specimens of the cost. Behold the anguish of suspense, existence itself +wavering in the balance, uncertain whether to rise or fall; already, +close behind you and around you, thick winrows of corpses on +battlefields, countless maimed and sick in hospitals, treachery among +Generals, folly in the Executive and Legislative departments, schemers, +thieves everywhere,--cant, credulity, make-believe everywhere. Thought +you greatness was to ripen for you, like a pear? If you would have +greatness, know that you must conquer it through ages, centuries,--must +pay for it with a proportionate price. For you, too, as for all lands, +the struggle, the traitor, the wily person in office, scrofulous wealth, +the surfeit of prosperity, the demonism of greed, the hell of passion, +the decay of faith, the long postponement, the fossil-like lethargy, the +ceaseless need of revolutions, prophets, thunder-storms, deaths, births, +new projections, and invigorations of ideas and men." + +The "Memoranda during the War" is mainly a record of personal +experiences, nursing the sick and wounded soldiers in the hospitals: +most of it is in a low key, simple, unwrought, like a diary kept for +one's self; but it reveals the large, tender, sympathetic soul of the +poet even more than his elaborate works, and puts in practical form that +unprecedented and fervid comradeship which is his leading element. It is +printed almost verbatim, just as the notes were jotted down at the time +and on the spot. It is impossible to read it without the feeling of +tears, while there is elsewhere no such portrayal of the common soldier, +and such appreciation of him, as is contained in its pages. It is +heart's blood, every word of it, and along with "Drum-Taps" is the only +literature of the war thus far entirely characteristic and worthy of +serious mention. There are in particular two passages in the "Memoranda" +that have amazing dramatic power, vividness, and rapid action, like some +quick painter covering a large canvas. I refer to the account of +the assassination of President Lincoln, and to that of the scenes in +Washington after the first battle of Bull Run. What may be called +the mass-movement of Whitman's prose style--the rapid marshaling +and grouping together of many facts and details, gathering up, and +recruiting, and expanding as the sentences move along, till the force +and momentum become like a rolling flood, or an army in echelon on the +charge--is here displayed with wonderful effect. + +Noting and studying what forces move the world, the only sane +explanation that comes to me of the fact that such writing as these +little volumes contain has not, in this country especially, met with its +due recognition and approval, is that, like all Whitman's works, they +have really never yet been published at all in the true sense,--have +never entered the arena where the great laurels are won. They have been +printed by the author, and a few readers have found them out, but to all +intents and purposes they are unknown. + +I have not dwelt on Whitman's personal circumstances, his age (he is +now, 1877, entering his fifty-ninth year), paralysis, seclusion, and the +treatment of him by certain portions of the literary classes, although +these have all been made the subjects of wide discussion of late, both +in America and Great Britain, and have, I think, a bearing under the +circumstances on his character and genius. It is an unwritten tragedy +that will doubtless always remain unwritten. I will but mention an +eloquent appeal of the Scotch poet, Robert Buchanan, published in London +in March, 1876, eulogizing and defending the American bard, in his +old age, illness, and poverty, from the swarms of maligners who still +continue to assail him. The appeal has this fine passage:-- + +"He who wanders through the solitudes of far-off Uist or lonely Donegal +may often behold the Golden Eagle sick to death, worn with age or +famine, or with both, passing with weary waft of wing from promontory +to promontory, from peak to peak, pursued by a crowd of rooks and crows, +which fall back screaming whenever the noble bird turns his indignant +head, and which follow frantically once more, hooting behind him, +whenever he wends again upon his way." + +Skipping many things I should yet like to touch upon,--for this paper is +already too long,--I will say in conclusion that, if any reader of mine +is moved by what I have here written to undertake the perusal of "Leaves +of Grass," or the later volume, "Two Rivulets," let me yet warn him +that he little suspects what is before him. Poetry in the Virgilian, +Tennysonian, or Lowellian sense it certainly is not. Just as the living +form of man in its ordinary garb is less beautiful (yet more beautiful) +than the marble statue; just as the living woman and child that may have +sat for the model is less beautiful (yet more so) than one of Raphael's +finest Madonnas, or just as a forest of trees addresses itself less +directly to the feeling of what is called art and form than the house or +other edifice built from them; just as you, and the whole spirit of our +current times, have been trained to feed on and enjoy, not Nature or +Man, or the aboriginal forces, or the actual, but pictures, books, art, +and the selected and refined,--just so these poems will doubtless first +shock and disappoint you. Your admiration for the beautiful is never the +feeling directly and chiefly addressed in them, but your love for the +breathing flesh, the concrete reality, the moving forms and shows of the +universe. A man reaches and moves you, not an artist. Doubtless, too, a +certain withholding and repugnance has first to be overcome, analogous +to a cold sea plunge; and it is not till you experience the reaction, +the after-glow, and feel the swing and surge of the strong waves, +that you know what Walt Whitman's pages really are. They don't give +themselves at first,--like the real landscape and the sea, they are all +indirections. You may have to try them many times; there is something +of Nature's rudeness and forbiddingness, not only at the first, but +probably always. But after you have mastered them by resigning yourself +to them, there is nothing like them anywhere in literature for vital +help and meaning. The poet says:-- + + "The press of my foot to the earth springs a hundred affections, + That scorn the best I can do to relate them." + +And the press of your mind to these pages will certainly start new and +countless problems that poetry and art have never before touched, and +that afford a perpetual stimulus and delight. + +It has been said that the object of poetry and the higher forms of +literature is to escape from the tyranny of the real into the freedom of +the ideal; but what is the ideal unless ballasted and weighted with the +real? All these poems have a lofty ideal background; the great laws +and harmonies stretch unerringly above them, and give their vista +and perspective. It is because Whitman's ideal is clothed with rank +materiality, as the soul is clothed with the carnal body, that his poems +beget such warmth and desire in the mind, and are the reservoirs of so +much power. No one can feel more than I how absolutely necessary it is +that the facts of nature and experience be born again in the heart +of the bard, and receive the baptism of the true fire before they be +counted poetical; and I have no trouble on this score with the author +of "Leaves of Grass." He never fails to ascend into spiritual meanings. +Indeed, the spirituality of Walt Whitman is the chief fact after all, +and dominates every page he has written. + +Observe that this singer and artist makes no _direct_ attempt to be +poetical, any more than he does to be melodious or rhythmical. He +approaches these qualities and results as it were from beneath, and +always indirectly; they are drawn to him, not he to them; and if they +appear absent from his page at first, it is because we have been looking +for them in the customary places on the outside, where he never puts +them, and have not yet penetrated the interiors. As many of the fowls +hide their eggs by a sort of intuitive prudery and secretiveness, +Whitman always half hides, or more than half hides, his thought, his +glow, his magnetism, his most golden and orbic treasures. + +Finally, as those men and women respect and love Walt Whitman best who +have known him longest and closest personally, the same rule will apply +to "Leaves of Grass" and the later volume, "Two Rivulets." It is indeed +neither the first surface reading of those books, nor perhaps even the +second or third, that will any more than prepare the student for the +full assimilation of the poems. Like Nature, and like the Sciences, they +suggest endless suites of chambers opening and expanding more and more +and continually. + + +INDEX + + [Transcribist's note: Index has been shortened to names + of authors and to birds, with scientific names.] + + Aeschylus + Akers, Elizabeth. + Apuleius. + Audubon, John Jaines. + + Bacon, Francis. + Benton, Myron. + Bible. + Bittern, American (_Botaurus lentiginosus_). + Bjoernson, Bjoernstjerne. + Blackbird, cow, or cowbird (_Molothrus ater_). + Blackbird, European. + Bluebird (_Sialia sialis_). + Bobolink (_Dolichonyx oryzivorus_). + Bryant, William Cullen. + Buchanan, Robert. + Bunting, snow, or snowflake (_Passerina nivalis_). + Burke, Edmund. + Burns, Robert. + Byron, Lord. + + Cardinal. See Grosbeak, cardinal. + Carlyle, Thomas. + Cedar-bird, or cedar waxwing (_Ampelis cedrorum_). + Chat, yellow-breasted (_Icteria virens_). + Chewink, or towhee (_Pipilo erythrophthalmus_). + Chickadee (_Parus atricapillus_). + Cicada. + Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. + Cowper, William. + Crow, American (_Corvis brachyrhynchos_). + Cuckoo, American. + Cuckoo, European. + Dante. + Darwin, Charles. + Dove, mourning (_Zenaidura macroura_). + + Eagle. + Emerson, Ralph Waldo. + Everett, Edward. + + Flagg, Wilson. + Flicker. See High-hole. + Flycatcher, great crested (_Myiarchus crinitus_). + Frogs. See Hyla. + + Gilder, Richard Watson. + Grasshopper of Greek poetry. + Grosbeak, cardinal, or cardinal (_Cardinalis cardinalis_). + Grosbeak, pine (_Pinicola enucleator leucura_). + Grouse, ruffed (_Bonasa umbellus_). + + Hamerton, Philip Gilbert. + Hawk. + High-hole, or yellow-hammer, or golden-shafted woodpecker, or + flicker (_Colaptes auratus luteus_). + Hogg, James. + Homer. + Hood, Thomas. + Hornets, black. + Hudson River valley. + Hummingbird, ruby-throated (_Trochilus colubris_). + Hyla, green. + Hyla, Pickering's. + + Ingelow, Jean. + + Jefferson, Thomas. + Jonson, Ben. + + Keats, John. + Kingbird (_Tyrannus tyrannus_). + + Lamb, Charles. + Lark. See Skylark. + Lark, shore or horned (_Otocoris alpestris_). + Lathrop, George Parson. + Lincoln, Abraham. + Lizard. + Locust. + Logan, John. + Loon (_Gavia imber_). + Lowell, James Russell. + Lyly, John. + + Macaulay, Thomas Babington. + Meadowlark (_Sturnella magna_). + Michael Angelo. + Milton, John. + Mockingbird (_Mimus polyglottos_). + + Oriole, Baltimore (_Icterus galbula_). + Oven-bird, or golden-crowned thrush (_Seiurus aurocapillus_). + Owl. + + Partridge. See Grouse, ruffed. + Pewee, wood (_Contopus virens_). + Phaedrus. + Phoebe-bird (_Sayornis phoebe_). + Pigeon, passenger (_Ectopistes migratorius_). + Pipit, American, or titlark (_Anthus pensilvanicus_). + Pipit, Sprague's (_Anthus spragueii_). + Pope, Alexander. + + Quail, or bob-white (_Colinus virginianus_). + + Redpoll (_Acanthis linaria_). + Robin, American (_Merula migratoria_). + + Sandpiper, spotted, or "tip-up" (_Actitis macularia_). + Sandpipers. + Shelley, Percy Bysshe. + + Snake. + Snake, garter. + Socrates. + Solomon. + Sparrow, social or chipping (_Spizella socialis_). + Sparrow, song (_Melospiza cinerea melodia_). + Sparrow, tree or Canada (_Spizella monticola_). + Sparrow, vesper (_Pooecetes gramineus_). + Sparrow, white-crowned (_Zonotrichia leucophrys_). + Sparrow, white-throated (_Zonotrichia albicollis_). + Spenser. + Strawberry. + Sugar-berry. + Swallow, barn (_Hirundo erythrogastra_). + Swallow, chimney, or chimney swift (_Chaetura pelagica_). + Swallow, cliff (Petrochellidon lunifrons). + Swift, chimney. See Swallow. + + Taine, Hippolyte Adolphe. + Tennyson, Alfred. + Thaxter, Celia. + Thomson, James. + Thoreau, Henry D.. + Thrasher, brown, or long-tailed thrush (_Toxostoma rufum_). + Thrush, golden-crowned. See Ovenbird. + Thrush, hermit (_Hylocichla guttata pallasii_). + Thrush, wood (_Hylocichla mustelina_). + Tip-up. See Sandpiper, spotted. + Titlark. See Pipit, American. + Townee. See Chewink. + Trowbridge, John T. + Turgenieff. + Turner, J. M. W. + Turtles. + + Warbler, pine (_Dendroica vigorsii_). + Water-thrush. + Whip-poor-will (_Antrostomus vociferous_). + Whitman, Walt. + Whittier, John Greenleaf. + Wilde, Richard Henry. + Wilson, Alexander. + Woodchuck. + Woodpecker, downy (_Dryobates pubescens medianus_). + Woodpecker, golden-shafted. See High-hole. + Woodpecker, hairy (_Dryobates villosus_). + Woodpecker, red-headed (_Melanerpes erythrocephalus_). + Wordsworth, William. + Wren, house (_Troglodytes aedon_). + + Yellow-hammer. See High-hole. + Yellow-throat, Maryland, or northern yellow-throat (_Geothlypis + trichas brachidactyla_). + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Birds and Poets, by John Burroughs + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BIRDS AND POETS *** + +***** This file should be named 5177.txt or 5177.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/5/1/7/5177/ + +Produced by Jack Eden + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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