: v:J; f OF NATURE EDITED BY SONGS OF NATURE JOHN BURROUGHS SONGS OF NATURE Edited y JQHty BURROUGHS GARDEN CITY Doubleday, Page & Co. Copyright, igoi, by DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & INTRODUCTION By John Burroughs 331098 IN compiling this anthology of Nature poetry I have been guid- ed entirely by my own taste in such matters ; I have here gath- ered together such poems as I myself prefer amid the material at my disposal, tfhis is accord- ing to the wishes of the publishers, who desired that the collection should be mine in a real sense, and thus carry with it such savor of originality as one marts preferences may give to such a work. 1 trust I have not carried my personal likings too far, or to the point of giving expression to any mere eccentricities of taste in my selections, fo make the work individual and yet of a high aver- age of excellence has been my hope. In such matters it all comes back after all to one's likes or dislikes. One may think he is try- ing the poem by the standard of the best that has been done in this line while he is only trying it by his own conception of that standard. (So much of that standard as is vital in his own mind, he can apply and no more~\ His own individual taste and judgment, clarified and disciplined, of course, by wide reading and reflection, are his VI only guides, ^fhe standard of the best is not something that any man can apply, as he can the standard of weights and measures only the best can apply the best. ^his collection represents on the -whole my judg- ment of the best Nature poems at my disposal in the language. I am surprised at the amount of so-called Nature poetry that has been added to English literature during the past fifty years, but I find only a little of it of permanent worth, ^he painted, padded, and perfumed Nature of so many of the younger poets I cannot stand at all. I have not knowingly admitted any poem that (was not true to my own observations of Nature) or that diverged at all from the facts of the case, tfhus, a poem that shows the swallow perched upon the barn in October I could not ac- cept, because the swallow leaves us in August ; or a poem that makes the chestnut bloom with the lilac an instance 1 came across in my reading would be ruled out on like grounds or when I find poppies blooming in the corn in an Amer- ican poem, as I several times have done, I pass by on the other side. In a bird poem I want the real bird as a ba- sis not merely a description of it, but its true \ place in the season and in the landscape, and no \ liberties taken ivith the facts of its life history. ' / must see or hear or feel the live bird in the Vll verses, as one does in Wordsworth s " Cuckoo" or Emerson's " titmouse " or Drawbridge' s " Pe- wee" Lowell is not quite true to the facts when in one of his poems he makes the male oriole as- sist at nest building, fhe male may seem to superintend the work, but he does not actually lend a hand. Give me the real bird first, and then all the poetry that can be evoked from it. I am aware that there is another class of bird poems, or poems inspired by birds, such as Keats' 's " Ode to a Nightingale" in which there is little or no natural history, not even of the subli- mated kind, and yet that take high rank as poems. It is the " waking dream " in these po- ems, the translation of sensuous impressions into spiritual longings and attractions that is the secret of their power. When the poet can give us himself, we can well afford to miss the bird. ^he fanciful and allegorical treatment of Nat- ure is for the most part distasteful to me. I do not want a mere rhymed description of an object or scene, nor a fanciful dressing of it up in po- etic imagery. I want it mirrored in the heart and life of the poet ; true to the reality without and to the emotion within, ^fhe one thing that makes a poem anyivay is emotion the emotion of love, of beauty, of sublimity and these emotions playing about the reality result in the true Nat- ure poetry as in Wordsworth, Emerson, and via Bryant. \ ^fhe poet is not so much to faint Nature as he is to recreate her. He interprets her when he infuses his own love into her. j I have also avoided all poems in which the form was difficult, tf he form of the masters like Tennyson and Wordsworth is easy, easy as it is in organic Nature in her happy moods. I do not want to be compelled to expend any force upon the poets form I want it all for his thought. A tortuous and difficult channel may add to the beauty of a mountain brook, but it does not add to the beauty of a poem, fke moun- tain-brook quality must be in the spirit, the con- ception. 1 have always been shy of the sonnet, because it so rarely flows ; it is labored ; it is arbitrary, with sentences cut in the middle and gasping out a feeble rhyme. But the sonnets of at least one of our younger poets author of " *fhe Fields of Dawn " actually flow, and one can read them without any mental contortion, as of course he can the great sonnets of Shakespeare and Milton and Wordsworth. One of our young Southern poets has written many Nature poems that are based on real love and observation, and that abound in striking and beautiful lines, but his form is involved and dif- ficult, and I have not been able to find in his nu- merous volumes one whole poem that I could take. rfhe standard New England poets are not more largely represented in my collection, because IX of copyright restrictions. A few of our minor poets are also absent for the same reason. I am indebted to Hovghton, Mifflin & Corn- fan} for special permission to use such poems as I have selected from the works of Longfellow, Emerson, Lowell, Whittier, Holmes, Bret Harte, Frank Bolles, Aldrich, Celia Thaxter, ^fhoreau, Miss Thomas, rfrowbridge, Edgar Fawcett, Maurice Thompson, Samuel Longfellow, Helen Gray Cone, E. C. Stedman, Frank D. Sherman, Mary Clemmer Ames, Anna Boynton Averill, Dinah Maria Mulock Craik, Wilson Flagg, William Dean Howells, Charles Kingsley, Lucy Larcom, George Parsons Lathrop, Lloyd Mifflin, James Montgomery, Nora Perry, Charles G. D. Roberts, Henry ^imrod, Jones f^ery, and A. West. I am also indebted to D. Appleton & Com- pany for five of the poems of Bryant ; to the Cen- tury Company for four poems from Richard Wat- son Gilder's " Five Books of Song," and two poems by Robert Underwood Johnson; to Robert Clark Company for poems by William D. Gallagher; to Henry Holt & Company for the poem by Robert Kelley Weeks; to Lee & She par d for the poem by David Atwood Wasson ; to J. B. Lippincott Company for Harrison Smith Morris's poem "tfhe Lonely Bird" from "Madonna and other Poems," and for the selection entitled " *fhe Closing Scene " from Thomas Buchanan Read's Poems ; to Longmans, Green & Company for the poem by Andrew Lang, and Poems by Sarah Piatt ; to David McKay for seven poems from Walt Whitman's " Leaves of Grass " ; to Small, Maynard & Company for fwo selections from Bliss Carman's " Songs from Fagabondia," and two from "Poems, by John B. ^abb" ; to A. M. Robertson for the poem by Charles Keeler ; to R. H. Russell for poems by Robert Burns Wilson; to Charles. Scribner's Sons for poems by Henry van Dyke. My thanks are further due to Miss Cornelia Holroyd Bradley for permission to use the poem by her mother, Mrs. Mary Emily Bradley ; to Rollin H. Cooke for permission to reprint the poem by Rose tferry Cooke ; to Charlton H. Royal, exec- utor of the estate of Thomas MacKellar, for allow- ing the reprint of "