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 BIRDS AND POETS 
 
 WITH OTHER PAPERS 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN BURROUGHS 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 
 
 , Cambrib0e 
 
 1891
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1877. 
 D* JOilN EURKOUOHS
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 I HATE deliberated a long time about coupling 
 gome of my sketches of out-door nature with a few 
 chapters of a more purely literary character ; and as 
 I have confided to my reader what pleased and en 
 gaged me beyond my four walls, to show him what 
 absorbs and delights me inside those walls ; especially 
 as I have aimed to bring my out-door spirit and 
 method within and still 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 Whit 
 man, for I assure him that in this misjudged man he 
 may press the strongest poetic pulse that has yet beat 
 in America, or perhaps in modern times. 
 
 Then these chapters are a proper supplement or 
 continuation of my themes, and their analogy in liter 
 ature, because in them we shall "follow out these 
 lessons of the earth and air," and behold their appli 
 cation to higher matters. 
 
 It is not an artificially graded path strewn with
 
 IT PREFACE. 
 
 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." 
 
 EBOPUS-ON-HUDSOM. 
 March, 1877.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 BIRDS AND POETS . . . t 
 
 TOUCHES OF NATUBB 51 
 
 A. BIRD MEDLEY 85 
 
 APRIL 109 
 
 SPRING POEMS .........125 
 
 OUR RURAL DIVINITY 135 
 
 BEFORE GENIUS 161 
 
 BEFORE BEAUTY ........ 173 
 
 EMERSON 185 
 
 THE FLIGHT OF THB EAGLM S13
 
 BIRDS AND POETS,
 
 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 fowleV song. 
 The wood-wele sang, and wolde not cease, 
 
 Sitting upon the spray; 
 So loud, it wakened Eobin Hood 
 
 In the greenwood where he lay." 
 
 IT might almost be said that the birds are all birda 
 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 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 un- 
 worldliness, the love, that characterizes 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
 
 10 BIRDS AND POETS. 
 
 fter landing in this country, he caught sight of the 
 red-headed woodpecker flitting among the trees a 
 bird that shows like a tri-colored 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 sugges 
 tion 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 beauti 
 ful 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 proto 
 type? Kingsley has shown how surely the old min 
 nesingers 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 
 ft melody as simple and unstudied. Such things a* 
 the following were surely caught from the fields or 
 the woods :
 
 BIRDS AND POETS. 11 
 
 " She sat down below a thorn, 
 Fine flowers in the valley, 
 And there has she her sweet babe born, 
 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 Eng 
 lish poets, have the bird-organization and the pierc 
 ing wild-bird cry. This of course is not saying that 
 they are the greatest poets, but that they have pre 
 eminently the sharp semi-tones of the sparrows and 
 larks. 
 
 But when the general reader thinks of the birds 
 of the poets he very naturally calls to mind the re 
 nowned birds, the lark and nightingale, Old- World 
 melodists, embalmed in Old-World poetry, but occa 
 sionally appearing on these shores, transported in the 
 verse of some callow singer. 
 
 The very oldest poets, the towering antique bards, 
 eeem to make little mention of the song-birds. They 
 bved better the soaring, swooping birds of prey, the 
 3agle, the ominous birds, the vultures, the storks, and 
 Tanes, or the clamorous sea-birds and the scream- 
 .ng 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.
 
 12 BIRDS AND POETS. 
 
 the voice of the turtle, and the warble of the night 
 ingale ; bat they were not alequate symbols to ex 
 press what he felt or to adorn his theme. JEschylua 
 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, suscep 
 tible characters the music of nature is not confined to 
 sweet sounds. The defiant scream of the hawk cir 
 cling aloft, the wild whinney of the loon, the whoop 
 ing of the crane, the booming of the bittern, the vul 
 pine bark of the eagle, the loud trumpeting of the 
 migratory geese sounding down out of the midnight 
 sky ; or by the sea-shore, 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."- 
 
 iay Cowper. "I never hear," says Burns in on*
 
 BIRDS AND POETS. 13 
 
 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, with 
 out 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 per 
 haps 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 com 
 mon 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 tne spot, how charm 
 ing 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 grasshop 
 per 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 
 iiad captured him :
 
 14 BIRDS AND POETS. 
 
 " 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 a filled the cadence 
 due." 
 
 " For while six chords beneath my fingers cried, 
 He with his tuneful voice the seventh supplied; 
 The mid-day 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 melan 
 choly, and to the cheerful she is cheerful. Shakes 
 peare in one of his sonnets speaks of her song ai 
 mournful, while Martial calls her the " most garru 
 lous " 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 ! thon surely art 
 A creature of ebullient heart; 
 These notes of thine they pierce and pierot; 
 Tumultuous harmony and fierce 1
 
 BIRDS AND POETS. 15 
 
 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." 
 
 .n 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 mocking-bird 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 Eu 
 ropean 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 ca 
 pricious, long-continued warble, doubling and redoub 
 ling, rising and falling, issuing from the groves and
 
 16 BIRDS AND POK1S. 
 
 the great gardens, and associated in the minds of the 
 poets with love and moonlight and the privacy of se 
 questered walks. All our sympathies and attractions 
 we 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, aud 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 free 
 dom 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 sev 
 eral hundred feet, remaining on the wing a number 
 of minutes, and pouring out its song with the ut 
 most clearness and abandon a slowly rising mu-
 
 BIRDS AND POETS. 17 
 
 Bital 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 appropri 
 ate verse. But so far only one Southern poet, Wilde, 
 h:is accredited the bird this song. This he has done 
 iu the following admirable sonnet : 
 
 TO THE MOCKING-BIRD. 
 
 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 Jacques, complain, 
 Musing on falsehood, violence, and wrong, 
 
 And sighing for thy motley coat again. 
 
 Aside from this sonnet, the mocking-bird 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 ha 
 bitually 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 aus 
 tere of the ancient masters. I refer to Walt Whit 
 man's " Out of the cradle endlessly rocking," in which 
 3
 
 18 BIRDS AND POETS. 
 
 he mocking-bird plays a part The poet's treatment 
 of the bird is entirely ideal and eminently character- 
 stic. 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 nocturn of the 
 mocking-bird, 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 WM 
 
 growing, 
 
 Up this sea-shore, 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 disturhinf 
 
 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 wind* blow North, 
 Day come white, or night come black, 
 Home, or river* 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 nect, 
 Vor returned that afternoon, nor the next, 
 HOT ever appeared again.
 
 BIRDS AND POETS. 19 
 
 And thenceforward, all summer, in the sound of the sea, 
 4nd 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, 
 t saw, I heard at intervals, the remaining one, the he-bird, 
 The solitary guest from Alabama. 
 
 Blow ! blow ! blow I 
 
 Blow up, sea-winds, along Paumanok's shore I 
 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! 
 r ,lse on its wave, soothes the wave behind, 
 And again another behind, embracing and lapping, every ont 
 
 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 low. 
 
 Oh madly the sea pushes, pushes upon the land, 
 With love with love. 
 
 9 night ! do I not see my love fluttering out there among tht 
 
 breakers 1 
 What is that little black thing I see there in the white t 
 
 Loud! loud! loud: 
 Loud I call to you, my love I 
 Biyh and char I shoot my voice over the wavet , 
 Surely you must know who is here, is here ; 
 You must know who I am, my love
 
 20 BIRDS AND POETS. 
 
 Low hanging moon ! 
 
 What it that dusky spot in your brown yellow 1 
 Oh it is the shape, the shape of my mate I 
 moon, do not keep her from me any longer. 
 
 Land! land! 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. 
 
 rising stars ! 
 
 Perhaps the one I want so much will rise, will rise with some of 
 you. 
 
 throat ! trembling throat ! 
 Sound clearer through the atmosphere ! 
 Pierce the woods, the earth ; 
 Somewhere listening to catch you, must be Jie one I want. 
 
 Shake out, carols! 
 Solitary here the night's carols ! 
 Carols of lonesome love I Death's carols! 
 Carols under that lagging, yellow, waning moon ! 
 Oh, under that moon, where she droops almost down into the lea I 
 reckless, despairing carols. 
 
 But soft I 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 / must be still, be still to listen ; 
 But not altogether still, for then she might not come immediately ti 
 
 Hither, my love ! 
 ttcre I am! Here! 
 
 With this just-sustained note I announce myself to yon ; 
 This gentle call is for you, my love, for you. 
 
 Do not be decoyed elsewhere! 
 That it the whittle of the wind it is not my voic ;
 
 BIRDS AND POETS. 21 
 
 Thai is the fluttering, the fluttering of the spray ; 
 Those are the sliadows of leaves. 
 
 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 sky 
 lark, a pastoral bird as the Philomel is an arboreal, 
 a creature of light and air and motion, the compan 
 ion 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 pedes- 
 triari-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 
 lithesome, 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, shower 
 ing down as thick and fast as drops of rain in a sum 
 mer shower. 
 
 Many noted poets have sung the praises of the 
 5ark 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 school-boy wiU 
 recall Hogg's poem, beginning 
 
 " Bird of the wilderness, 
 
 Blithesome and cumberiess, 
 Sweet be thy matin o'er moorland and lea!
 
 22 BIRDS AND POETS. 
 
 Emblem of happiness, 
 Blest is thy dwelling place 
 Oh to abide in the desert with thee! " 
 
 I heard of an enthusiastic American who wenf 
 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 trans 
 late 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 Words 
 worth's ; it is more lyrical and lark-like ; but it is 
 needlessly long, though no longer than the lark's song 
 tself, but the lark can't help it and Shelley can. J 
 |uote only a few stanzas : 
 
 " In the golJen lightning 
 Of the sunken sun, 
 O'er which clouds are brightning, 
 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
 
 BIRDS AND POETS. 23 
 
 Keen as are the arrows 
 Of that silver sphere, 
 Whose intense lamp narrows 
 In the white dawn clear, 
 Until we hardly see, but 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 " Par 
 nassus." 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 I 
 
 For thy song, lark, is strong; 
 Up with me, up with me, into the clouds 1 
 
 Singing, singing, 
 With all the heavens about thee ringing, 
 
 Lift me, guide me till I find 
 That spot which seems so to thy mind ! 
 
 14 1 have walked through wildernesses dreary, 
 
 And to-day my heart is weary; 
 Had I now the wings of a fairy 
 
 Up to thee would I fly. 
 There is madness about thee, and joy divine 
 In that song of thine
 
 24 BIRDS AND POETS. 
 
 Up with me, up with 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 th' Almighty Giver, 
 Jov and jollitj r be with us both! 
 Hearing thee, or else some other, 
 
 As merry a brother, 
 I on earth will go plodding on, 
 By myself, cheerfully, till the 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 East 
 ern States that answers to the skylark. The Ameri 
 can pipit, or titlark and the shore-lark, both birds of 
 the far North, and seen in the States only in fall and 
 winter, belong to this species, and are said to sing on 
 she wing in a similar strain. Common enough in our 
 woods are two birds that have many of the habits 
 nd manners of the lark the water-thrush and the 
 golden- crowned thrush, or oven-bird. They are both
 
 BIRDS AND POETS. 25 
 
 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, ec 
 static song, sweeter and more richly modulated thaix 
 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 in the West, in Dakota, and along the Platte 
 and Yellowstone rivers, it seems we have a genuine 
 skylark ( Sprague's lark), an excelsior songster, that 
 from far up in the transparent blue rains down its 
 notes for many minutes together. It is probably a 
 lineal descendant of the European species, and is, no 
 doubt, destined to figure in the future poetical litera 
 ture of the Yellowstone. 
 
 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 a no less poet than Bryant, and in 
 vested, with a lasting human charm in the sunny page 
 jf Irving, and is the only one of our songsters, I 
 believe, the mocking-bird cannot parody or imitate. 
 fcle affords the most marked example of exuberant 
 wide, and a glad, rollicking, holiday spirit that can
 
 26 BIRDS AND POETS. 
 
 be seen among our birds. Every note expresses com 
 placency 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 all set 
 tled ; and when she leads him on too wild a chase, he 
 turns lightly about and breaks out with a song that 
 is precisely analogous to a burst of gay and self-satis 
 fied laughter, as much as to say, " Ha ! ha ! ha ! 1 
 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 bobo 
 link undergoes a complete change; his form changes, 
 his color changes, his flight changes. From mottled 
 brown or brindle he becomes black and white, earn 
 ing, 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 
 uid retiring as he is forward and hilarious. Indeed, 
 she seems disagreeably serious and indisposed to any 
 fun or jollity, skurrying away at his approach, and 
 apparently annoyed at every endearing word and 
 look. It is surprising that all this parade of plumage 
 %nd tinkling of cymbals should be gone through with 
 4-id persisted in to please a creature so coldly iudif
 
 BIRDS AND POETS. 27 
 
 ferent as she really seems to be. If Robert 0' Lin 
 coln 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. In 
 deed, 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 who 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 
 yellow-bird, 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. 
 \ think the prospects now are of his gradual exter 
 mination, as gunners and sportsmen are clearly on 
 \be increase, while the limit of the bird's productivity
 
 28 BIRDS AND POETS. 
 
 in the North has no doubt been reached long ago. 
 There are no more meadows to be added to his do 
 main 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. 
 Ghee, chee, chee. 
 
 Robert of Lincoln is gayly drest, 
 
 Wearing a bright black wedding-coat, 
 White are his shoulders and white his craft, 
 Hear him call in his merry note: 
 Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, 
 Spink, spank, spink :
 
 BIRDS AND POETS. 29 
 
 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 ornitholo 
 gist, Mr. Wilson Flagg, to write by far the best poein 
 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 
 Uobbing 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! 
 *'Tis you that would a-wooirg go, down among the rushes O! 
 But wait a week, till flowers are cheery, wait a week, and er 
 you marry,
 
 80 BIRDS AND POETS. 
 
 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 Words 
 worth's poem on the cuckoo, without recognizing its 
 truthfulness, or how thoroughly, in the main, the de 
 scription applies to our own species. If the poem 
 bad been written in New England or New York, it 
 could not have suited our case better. 
 
 " 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 loud note smites my ear ! 
 From hill to hill it seems to pass, 
 At once far off and near. 
 
 " I hear thee babbling to the vale 
 Of sunshine and of flowers ; 
 And unto me thou bring'st a tale 
 Of visionary hours. 
 
 4 Thrice welcome, darling of the spring* 
 
 Even yet thou art to me 
 No bird, but an invisible thing, 
 A voice, a mystery.
 
 BIRDS AND POETS. 81 
 
 ** The same whom in my school-boy days 
 
 I listened to ; the 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 Jonged 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, fairy 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 later poet benefited by them. 
 Burke admired them so much that while ou a visit 
 to Edinburgh he sought the author out to compli 
 ment 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 school-boy, wandering through the wood 
 To pull the primrose gay,
 
 82 BIRDS AND POETS. 
 
 Starts thy curious voice 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 gayeT 
 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 per 
 fectly as to deceive any but the shrewdest ear. An 
 English lady tells me its voice reminds you of children 
 at play, and is full of gayety and happiness. It is a 
 persistent songster, and keeps up its call from morn 
 ing to night. Indeed, certain parts of Wordsworth's 
 j>oem 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 him 
 self a kind of cuckoo, a solitary voice, syllabling the 
 loneliness that broods over streams and woods : 
 
 "At once far oft and near." 
 
 Our cuckoo is not a spring bird, being seldom seen 
 or heard in the North before June. He is a great 
 devourer of canker-worms, and when these pests ap-
 
 BIRDS AND POETS. 33 
 
 pear he comes out of his forest seclusion and makes 
 excursions through the orchard stealthily and quietly, 
 regaling himself upon those pulpy, fuzzy tidbits. 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 received as af 
 fectionate treatment at their hands as the song-birds. 
 One readily recalls Emerson's "Titmouse," Trow- 
 bridge'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 soar 
 ing 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 mid 
 night stillness with thy uncanny cry ! The owl is 
 the great bug-a-boo of the feathered tribes. His ap 
 pearance 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 
 
 3
 
 84 BIRDS AND POETS. 
 
 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 songg 
 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-who! 
 
 Tu-whit ! tu-who ! 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-who ! 
 
 Tu-whit ! tu-who ! a merry note, 
 While greasy Joan doth keel the pot." 
 
 Fhere is, perhaps, a slight reminiscence of this song 
 n Tennyson's " Owl " :
 
 BIRDS AND POETS. 35 
 
 " 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." 
 
 Aid again in this from "A Dream of Fair Worn- 
 
 in": 
 
 " 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."
 
 36 BIKDS AND POETS. 
 
 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 
 
 44 The swamp, where hums the dropping snipe." 
 
 His single bird-poem, aside from the song I have 
 quoted, is " The Blackbird," the Old- World prototpye 
 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 plum 
 age is its beak, which is as yellow as a kernel of In 
 dian corn. The following are the two middle stanzas 
 of the poem : 
 
 14 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. 
 
 41 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 black 
 bird as the ouzel-cock ; indeed he puts quite a flock 
 of birds in this song : 
 
 44 The ouzel-cock so black of hue, 
 
 With orange tawny bill; 
 The throstle with his note so true, 
 The wren with little quill ;
 
 BIRDS AND POETS. 87 
 
 The finch, the sparrow, and the lark, 
 
 The plain song cuckoo gray, 
 Whose note full many a man doth mark, 
 
 And dares net answer, nay." 
 
 So far as external appearances are concerned 
 form, plumage, grace of manner, etc., 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, sit 
 ting 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, 
 Dristling 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 
 \vild Irishman of them all is the great crested fly 
 catcher, a large leather colored or sandy coinplex- 
 ioned bird that prowls through the woods, uttering 
 its harsh, uncanny note and waging fierce warfare 
 upon its fellows. 
 
 The exquisite of the species, and the braggart of 
 >he orchard, is the kingbird, a bully that loves to strip
 
 38 BIRDS AND POETS. 
 
 the feathers off its more timid neighbors like the blue 
 bird, 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 not 
 withstanding 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 carefui 
 study of the bird and its haunts, and is good poetrj 
 as well as good ornithology. 
 
 " The listening Dryads hushed the woods ; 
 
 The boughs were thick, and thin and few 
 
 The golden ribbons fluttered through ; 
 Their sun-embroidered leafy hooda 
 
 Th 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, 
 80 melancholy and so sweet, 
 The dim-eyed vio'ets yearned with pain.
 
 BIRDS AND POETS. 39 
 
 '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, 
 4 Pe-wee ! pe-wee ! peer ! ' 
 
 1 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 spell-bound all the day 
 That low, entrancing note to hear, 
 
 ' Pe-wee ! pe-wee ! peer ! ' 
 
 44 1 quit the search, and sat me down 
 
 Beside the brook, irresolute, 
 
 And watched a little bird in suit 
 Of sombre 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, 
 
 4 Pe-wee ! pe-wee ! peer J ' 
 
 4 For so I found my forest-bird, 
 The pewee of the loneliest woods,
 
 40 BIRDS AND POETS. 
 
 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 " Hum- 
 blebee" 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 phi 
 losopher. 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 Emer 
 sonian muse. 
 
 Emerson himself is a northern hyperborean genius 
 a winter bird with a clear, saucy, cheery call, and 
 i ot a passionate summer songster. His lines have 
 \ittle melody to the ear, but they have the vigor and 
 distinctness of all pure and compact things. The*
 
 BIRDS AND POETS. 41 
 
 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, 
 'Twas 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 hand, 
 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.
 
 42 BIRDS AND POETS. 
 
 ' 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 I 
 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 V 
 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 hen 
 To find the antidote of fear, 
 Now hear thee say in Roman key, 
 Pcean I Veni, vidi, vici." 
 
 A late bird-poem and a good one of its kind ia 
 Colia Thaxter's " Sandpiper," which recalls Bryant's 
 " Water-fowl " in its successful rendering of the spirit 
 and atmosphere of the scene and the distinctness witk
 
 BIRDS AND POETS. 43 
 
 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, etc., awaken quite a different 
 train of emotions from those awakened by the land- 
 birds. They all have clinging to them some remi 
 niscence 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, the smallest of the species, 
 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 him running or flit 
 ting before him, following up the breakers and pick 
 ing up the aquatic insects left on the sands ; and the 
 trout-fisher along the farthest inland stream like 
 wise intrudes upon its privacy. Flitting along from 
 rtone 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 
 kimming up or down the stream on its long convex
 
 44 BIRDS AND POETS. 
 
 wings, uttering its shrill cry, the sandpiper is not a 
 bird of the sea merely ; and Mrs. Thaxter's poem is 
 M much for the dweller inland as 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, 
 At up and down the beach we flit, 
 
 One little sandpiper and I. 
 
 Above onr heads the sullen clouds 
 
 Scud black and swift across the sky ; 
 Like silent ghosts in misty shrouds 
 
 Stand out the white light-houses 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 1 
 To what warm shelter canst thou fly?
 
 BIRDS AND POETS. 46 
 
 I do not fear fcr 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 Halleck, 
 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 
 laeard above the cold damp earth, as is its floral type 
 to the eye a few weeks later. Lowell's two lines 
 tome nearer the mark : 
 
 " The bluebird, snifting his light load of song 
 Fiom post to post alone the cheerless fenca."
 
 46 BIRDS AND POETS. 
 
 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 humming-bird too es 
 capes through the finest meshes of rhyme. 
 
 The most melodious of our songsters, the wood- 
 thrush and hermit-thrush birds whose strains, more 
 than any others, express harmony and serenity 
 have not, as I am aware of, yet had reared to them 
 their merited poetic monument unless indeed the 
 already named poet of the mocking-bird 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, 
 T> the solemn shadowy cedars and ghostly pines so still." 
 
 Numerous others of our birds would seem to chal 
 lenge attention by their calls and notes. There is 
 the Maryland yellow-throat, for instance, standing in 
 the door of his bushy tent, and calling out as you ap 
 proach, " which way, sir ! " " which way, sir I " If
 
 BIRDS AND POETS. 47 
 
 he says this to the ear of common folk, what would 
 he not say to the poet ? One of the pewees says 
 " stay there ! " with greafc emphasis. The cardinal 
 grossbeak 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 pedestrian meadow-lark 
 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.
 
 TOUCHES OF NATURE,
 
 TOUCHES OF NATURE. 
 
 WHERKVER 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 self 
 same 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 voy 
 age at least. Why has she not made the musquito 
 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 eat up the little fish, and the little fish know 
 '.t, and on the very day they are hatched seek shallow
 
 52 TOUCHES OF NATURE. 
 
 water, and put little sand bars 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 zig-zag 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 J 
 lately saw a black snake in the woods trying to swal 
 low the garter snake, and he had made some head
 
 TOUCHES OF NATURE. 63 
 
 way, 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, appar 
 ently 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 succeed. 
 
 " If the red slayer thinks 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 materia.
 
 54 TOUCHES OF NATURE. 
 
 act 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 ia 
 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, etc. ? 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 tc 
 me the nurserymen really force her. They cut ofl 
 the head of a savage and clap on the head of a fine 
 gentleman, and the crab becomes a Swaar or a Bald 
 win. Or is it a kind of deception practiced upon 
 Nature, which succeeds only by being carefully con 
 cealed ? 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
 
 TOUCHES OF NATURE. 55 
 
 endless repetition of the old ones a world perpet 
 ually 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, etc. ; 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 ? 
 
 il. 
 
 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 go on without 
 him. The geological ages, the convulsions and par 
 turition throes of the globe, were to bring him forth 
 jo more than the beetles. Is not all this wealth ot 
 tfie seasons, these solar and sidereal influences, this 
 iepth and vitality and internal fire, these seas, and
 
 56 TOUCHES OF NATURE. 
 
 rivers, and oceans, and atmospheric currents, as neces 
 sary to the life of the ants and worms we tread undei 
 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, etc., 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 was 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 In 
 finite. Size is only relative, and the imagination 
 finds no end to the series either way. 
 
 in. 
 
 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
 
 TOUCHES OF NATURE. 57 
 
 geese or hens, or with donkeys, he would not have 
 Rsked 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 care 
 fully, 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 them. They were 
 as little disposed to quarrel as I was. It is indeed 
 the eagle among hornets, and very noble and digni 
 fied in its bearing. They used to come freely into 
 dhe house and prey upon the flies. You would hear 
 that deep, mellow hum, and see the black falcon pois 
 ing on wing, or striking here and there at the flies, 
 that scattered on his approach like chickens before a 
 nawk. When he had caught one he would alight
 
 58 TOUCHES OF NATURE. 
 
 upon some object and proceed to dress and draw his 
 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 his arm the hornet flew to his nest, where no 
 doubt in due time it was properly served up on the 
 royal board. Every dinner inside these paper walla 
 is a state dinner, for the queen bee 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 bee when he came wilh his bur 
 den 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 
 bee could not get inside, he, after some deliberation, 
 proceeded to the unfinished part and went forward 
 with his work. Hence I inferred that may be the 
 bee went inside to report and to receive orders, or 
 possibly to surrender its material into fresh hands. 
 Its career when away from the nest is beset with dan 
 gers , the colony is never large, and the safe return 
 of every bee is no doubt a matter of solicitude to the 
 royal mother. 
 
 The hornet was the first paper maker, and holds 
 jhe original patent. The paper it makes is about like
 
 TOUCHES OF NATURE. 59 
 
 ihat 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 in 
 quire 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 stop 
 ping 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
 
 60 TOUCHES OF NATURE. 
 
 3ttred, aiid the hairy and taciturn frontiersman has 
 had experience to some purpose. The true poet 
 knows more about Nature than the naturalist be 
 cause he carries her open secrets in his heart. Ecker- 
 man could instruct Goethe in ornithology, but could 
 not Goethe instruct Eckerman 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 oi 
 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 ani 
 mal, 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, 
 '.he 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 Charier
 
 TOUCHES OF NATURE. 61 
 
 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 nation 
 ality. 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 resem 
 blance 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 
 tie 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 
 ur later humorists have it not at all, but in its stead
 
 62 TOUCHES OF NATURE. 
 
 an intellectual quickness and perception of the ludi 
 crous that is not unmixed with scorn. 
 
 One of the marks of the great humorist, like Cer 
 vantes, 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 
 Bcorn." 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 
 iusisted 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 sat 
 isfactorily 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 
 Sne, but the complaint I make with our humorists 
 * that they are fine and not coarse in any healthful
 
 TOUCHES OF NATURE. 63 
 
 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 unc 
 tion, which is the marrowfat of humor, and for humil 
 ity, 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 
 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 superi 
 ority. 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 
 pf 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 subjecu and enter into them through their 
 blood, their sexuality, and manliness, instead of stand
 
 64 TOUCHES OF NATURE. 
 
 ing 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, 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 in 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, am I comforted and made stout of heart. 
 O night, where is thv 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 
 oulse for all day. It is the Ajax of trains. I heaf
 
 TOUCHES OF NATURE. 65 
 
 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 
 ft
 
 66 TOUCHES OF NATURE. 
 
 held high carnival. It looked like pre oncerted ac 
 tion 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 up 
 turned, 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 pipe- 
 stems, 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 mid 
 summer 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 
 Bound of the whetstone, coming up from the meadows 
 in the dewy morning, was pleasant music. But 1 
 find the sound of the mowing-machine and the patent 
 reaper are 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 
 f the nocturnal insects. The mowing-machine re
 
 TOUCHES OF NATURE. 67 
 
 peats 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- 
 eongs have (jeased, the ground crackles under foot, 
 the eye of day is brassy and merciless, and in har 
 mony with all these things is the rattle of the mower 
 and 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 pour 
 ing rain may be more auspicious than a sleeping sun 
 shine. When the stove draws well the fogs and 
 \tmes 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 an 
 gelic days we have in winter, such as Whittier has so 
 well described in these lines . 
 
 " Around the glistening wonder bent 
 The blue walls A the firmamen* ; 
 No cloud above, no eaHh below, 
 A universe of sky and snow."
 
 68 TOUCHES OF NATURE. 
 
 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 peo 
 ple say, and the spring sun certainly makes one's in 
 tellectual 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. 
 
 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 
 .a suddenly a great fall in the mercury, the frost la^i
 
 TOUCHES OF NATURE. 69 
 
 liege 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 was visible, or if we represent it say by 
 smoke, then the December landscape would present 
 a curious spectacle. We would see the smoke lying 
 low over the meadows, thickest in the hollows and 
 moist places, and where the turf was oldest and 
 densest. It would cling to the fences and ravines. 
 Under every evergreen tree we would see the vapor 
 rising and filling the branches, while the woods of pine 
 and hemlock would be blue with it 1< ug 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 faL 1 and early winter. 
 The early frosts keep well back from the Hudson,
 
 70 TOUCHES OF NATURE. 
 
 skulking behind the ridges, and hardly come over in 
 sight at any point. But they grow bold as the sea 
 son advances, till the river's h'res too 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 refresh 
 ing to contemplate a creature so positive and charac 
 teristic. 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 feroc 
 ity, like the hawks ; others its cunning, like the 
 crow ; others its sweetness and melody, like the song 
 birds. The loon represents its wildness and solitari 
 ness. 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 t 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 reso 
 lutely 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
 
 TOUCHES OF NATURE. 71 
 
 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 
 oroke 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 be- 
 ng pursued, and no mistake, it dived quickly, and 
 vhen it came up again, had gone many times as far 
 is the boat had in the same space of time. Then it
 
 72 TOUCHES OF NATURE. 
 
 iove 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 one mile away. 
 Its course must have been, and doubtless was, an act 
 ual 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 was kin 
 dred 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 suprem 
 acy of the sense of sight in the human species. All 
 the animals the dog, the fox, wolf, deer, cow, horse, 
 etc. 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 recogni 
 tion. 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 
 ee a strange object they are not satisfied till eack
 
 TOUCHES OF NATURE. 7tJ 
 
 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'? 
 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 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 propor 
 tion 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
 
 74 TOUCHES OF NATURE. 
 
 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 
 revery 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, 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 
 is all over with you in that direction ? A little elder 
 bark, something fresh and bitter from the woods, is 
 ibout the best thing you can take. 
 
 XIY. 
 
 Notwithstanding what I have elsewhere said abou* 
 the desolation of snow, when one looks closely it ii 
 attle more than a thin veil after all, and takes and
 
 TOUCHES OF NATURE. 75 
 
 epeats the form of whatever it covers. Every 
 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 
 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, dissem 
 blances, etc. ? 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 fundamen 
 tal hue, whether it be this or that, makes itself felt 
 and is alone important. 
 
 xv. 
 
 Men follow their noses it is said. I have won 
 dered 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 neve/
 
 76 TOUCHES OF NATURE. 
 
 reappeared in the human countenance. I am thinking 
 especially of that straight, strong profile. Is it really 
 god-like, or is this impression the result of associa 
 tion ? But any suggestion or reminiscence of it in 
 the modern face at once gives one the idea oi 
 strength. It is a face strong in the loins, or it sug 
 gests a high, elastic instep. It is the face of order 
 and proportion. Those arches are the symbols ot 
 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 his ideas passed 
 readily into form. In the modern face the arches are 
 more or less crushed, and the nose 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 ia 
 *s indifferent, as careless, as vagrant as she. He 
 orowses, 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
 
 TOUCHES OF NATURE. 77 
 
 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 ia 
 no sentiment in children, because there is no ruin ; 
 nothing has gone to decay about them yet not a 
 leaf or 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 neighbor 
 hood, or of one end of the town against those of the 
 other end. A bridge, a river, a railroad track, are 
 llways boundaries of hostile or semi-hostile tribes. 
 The boys that go up the road from the country school
 
 78 TOUCHES OF NATURE. 
 
 hoot derisively at those that go down the road, and 
 Dot 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 in 
 terfere. Whenever an Ohio boy was caught on the 
 West Virginia side of the river he was unmercifully 
 boaten, 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 con 
 ceivable 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 morn 
 ing. More recently the boys of a large manufactur 
 ing town of New Jersey were divided into two hos 
 tile clans that came into frequent collision. One 
 Saturday both sides mustered its forces, and a regular 
 fight ensued, one boy here also losing his life from 
 the encounter. 
 
 E\ery village and settlement is at times the scene 
 of these youthful collisions. When a new boy ap 
 pears in the village, or at the country school, ho\v 
 the other boys crowd around him and take his meas 
 ire, or pick at him and insult him to try his mettle.
 
 TOUCHES OF NATURE. 79 
 
 I knew a boy, twelve or thirteen years old, who 
 iras 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, 
 aud 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 mo 
 ments 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 
 wid 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 
 oeyond which thev refused to follow.
 
 80 TOUCHES OF NATURE. 
 
 The world the boy lives in is separate and distinct 
 from the world the man lives in. It is a world in 
 habited 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 coon. 
 
 The boy is a savage, a barbarian, in his taste 
 devouring roots, leaves, bark, unripe fruit, etc. ; 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 
 avage and ear-splitting discords. The police was 
 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 untruthfai- 
 uess. 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 invent* 
 another. I knew a boy who was in the habit of eat- 
 jig apples in school. His teacher finally caught bin
 
 TOUCHES OF NATURE. 81 
 
 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. 
 
 u 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, un 
 abashed. 
 
 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 bit 
 terness of the unripe fruit that we are lamenting. 
 8
 
 A BIRD MEDLEY.
 
 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 attach 
 ments, and an observing turn of mind, does an ac 
 quaintance with the birds form a close and inval 
 uable 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 had the ef 
 fect to comfort him and cheer 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 my 
 self 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 wist-
 
 86 A BIRD MEDLEY. 
 
 fully 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, meadow-larks, etc., all there before me, 
 and ready to renew and perpetuate the old associa 
 tions. Before my house is begun, theirs is com 
 pleted ; 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 cav 
 ity 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 
 snow-storm, 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 maiiv 
 decades of years. 
 
 There is something almost pathetic in the fact tha
 
 A BIRD MEDLEY. 87 
 
 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 boy 
 hood, the same notes, the same calls, and, to all in 
 tents 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 
 meadow-lark, the drumming of the grouse, how 
 these sounds ignore the years, and strike on the ear 
 with the melody of that spring-time 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 asso 
 ciated with your grief or joy ! Shall I ever again 
 ba 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, ar^d 
 <?eck after week, this bird whistled and warbled in \
 
 88 A BIRD MEDLEY. 
 
 mulberry by the door, while sorrow, like a pall, dark 
 ened 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 1 
 Hearest thou, traveler ! 
 What he singeth to me? 
 
 " Not nnless God made sharp thiiie ear 
 
 With sorrow such as mine, 
 Out of that delicate lay couldst thon 
 Its heavy tale divine." 
 
 It is the opinion of some naturalists that birds 
 never die what is called a natural deach, 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 child 
 hood a red-bird 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 do 
 mestic 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 tumor- 
 ous or fungous growth that crippled the bird com 
 pletely. On another occasion I picked up one tha* 
 appeared well but could not keep its centre of gray 
 ty when in flight, and so fell to the ground.
 
 A BIRD MEDLEY. 89 
 
 Oue 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 would be least liable 
 to fall a prey to their natural enemies. It is doubt 
 ful 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 humming 
 bird, 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 spe 
 cies. 
 
 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 sea 
 son 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 tne robin, brisk, vocif 
 erous, musical, dotting everv field, and larking it in 
 every grove ; he is as easily atop at this season as the 
 Dobolink is a month or two later Tne tints of April
 
 90 A BIRD MEDLEY. 
 
 are ruddy and brown the new furrow and the leaf 
 less 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 do 
 mestic 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 thrust 
 ing 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 cold 
 ness and indifference of the female. The females of 
 every species of birds, however, I believe, have thii 
 n common they are absolutely free from coquetry
 
 A BIRD MEDLEY. 91 
 
 or any airs and wi'.es 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 al 
 ways 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 pas 
 senger-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 brig 
 ades, and divisions, like a giant army. The scouting 
 and foraging squads are not unusual, and every few 
 % f ears we see larger bodies of them, but rarely, indeed, 
 do we witness the spectacle of the whole vast tribe in
 
 92 A BIRD MEDLEY. 
 
 motion. Sometimes we hear of them in Virginia, 01 
 Kentucky and Tennessee ; then in Ohio or Pennsyl 
 vania ; then in New York, then in Canada or Michi 
 gan 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 bow 
 ing lines, or else in dense masses, they moved across 
 the sky. It was not the whole army, but j snould 
 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. 
 
 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 ia 
 like the passage of a victorious army. No longer 
 inch by inch does spring come, but these geese ad 
 vance the standard across zones at one pull. How 
 my desire goes with them ; how something in ma 
 mid and migratory, plumes itself and follows fast I 
 
 " Steering north, with raucous cry, 
 Through tracts and provinces of sky,
 
 A BIRD MEDLEY. 93 
 
 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 onl^ upon the great 
 wings of the geese and the lesser wings of the pig 
 eons and birds, but in the many more subtle and in 
 direct signs and mediums, is also a part of the com 
 pensation 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
 
 94 A BIRD MEDLEY. 
 
 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 under ground, and often gets here by the lat 
 ter course first. She undermines winter, when out 
 wardly his front is nearly as bold as ever. I have 
 known the trees to bud long before, by outward ap 
 pearances, one would expect them to. Th* 1 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 con 
 centrated 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 mys 
 terious food the chickadee and 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 se 
 rious one with the birds. Give them plenty to eat
 
 A BIRD MEDLEY. 9& 
 
 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 
 Beem to have been decided in their choice by the at 
 tractions of my rustic porch and the fruit of a sugar- 
 berry tree (celtis a kind of lotus) that stood in 
 front of it. They lodged in the porch and took 
 their meals in the tree. Indeed, they became reg 
 ular 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 neat 
 ness of the porch floor. But the pair would not take 
 any hints of this kind, and did not give up their quar 
 ters in the porch or their lotus berries till spring. 
 
 Many times during the winter the sugar-berry tree 
 vas visited by a flock of cedar-birds that also win-
 
 96 A BIRD MEDLEY. 
 
 tered 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 grossbeak, 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 every 
 where. 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 bring 
 ing one of them down, I found it was a bird I had 
 never before seen ; in color and shape like the purpie 
 finch, but quite as large again in size. From its 
 heavy beak, I at once recognized it as belonging to the 
 family of grossbeaks. A few days later I saw large 
 numbers of them in the woods, on the ground, and ip
 
 A BIRD MEDLEY. 97 
 
 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 snow 
 bird, 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 
 red-poll, the former a bird larger than the social spar 
 row 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 barn-yard all 
 winter picking up the hay-seed, the sparrow some 
 times venturing in on the hay-mow 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 o^ birds face our winters, and by 
 various shifts worry through till spring, some of them 
 permanent residents, aui some of theia visitors from 
 7
 
 98 A BIRD MEDLET. 
 
 the far North, yet there is but one genuine snow 
 bird, nursling of the snow, and that is the snow-bunt 
 ing, 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 resi 
 dents. During the ice-harvesting on the river, I see 
 them flitting about among the gangs of men, or float 
 ing 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, 
 rag-weed, or pig-weed left standing in the fall adds to 
 their winter stores. 
 
 Though this bird, and one or two others, like the 
 chickadee and nut-hatch, 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, ex 
 cept during the severest frosts ; but with us as far 
 south as Virginia, and, for aught I know, much far 
 ther, 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 tb*
 
 A BIRD MEDLEY. 99 
 
 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 pro 
 portion 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 con 
 ferred, 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 sojourn 
 ing in both fall and spring ; but only on one occasion 
 have I ever heard any part of the song of the white- 
 trowned, and that proceeded froZu what I took to be
 
 100 A BIRD MEDLEY. 
 
 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 song 
 ster, 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 
 way-side places. Nature has denied them all brill 
 iant 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 tha little architect has wrought day after 
 day and left no marks. There has been an excava 
 tion, 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 
 wore nicely adjusted to its place and surroundings
 
 A BIRD MEDLEY. 101 
 
 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 nidification 
 has fairly begun, what a sweet, pleasing little mystery 
 the silent old bank holds ! 
 
 The song-sparrow, whose nest I have been describ 
 ing, 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 pecul 
 iarly 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 ani 
 mated, and far surpassed anything I ever before heard 
 r rom that source. 
 
 But the most noticeab's instancy jf departure from
 
 10'2 A BIRD MEDLEY. 
 
 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 in 
 strument 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 who 
 ever would listen. He did not return again the next 
 reason ; or, if he did, the malformation of his song 
 jras gone. 
 I have noticed that the bobolink does not sing the
 
 A BIRD MEDLEY. 103 
 
 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 dis- 
 .inctly articulated, and running off with more sparkle 
 and liltingness. It reminds one of the clearer mount 
 ain 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, inter 
 spersed 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-bud known to me of 
 marked and conspicuous plumage. He is the only 
 black-and-white bird we have east of the Mississippi, 
 and what is still more -odd, ne is black beneath and 
 jraite above the reverse of the fact in all other
 
 104 A BIRD MEDLEY. 
 
 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 new-comer, and not of 
 one to the manor 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 mocking-bird 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 mocking-bird. 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 
 yellow-bird, the king-bird, 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 pl 
 giarize. He could not steal the bobolink's thunder. 
 
 The lark is only a more marvelous songster than 
 the bobolink on account of his soaring flight, and th
 
 A BIRD MEDLEY. 10* 
 
 lustained copiousness of his song. His note is rasp 
 ing 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 interrup 
 tion for many minutes together, it is very agreeable. 
 
 The bird among us that is usually called a lark, 
 namely, the meadow-lark, but which our later classi 
 fiers 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 under 
 going 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 orig 
 inal 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 resort? thither yet. 
 But the chimney, notwithstanding the smoke, seems 
 to suit his taste best. In the spring, before they have
 
 106 A BIRD MEDLEY. 
 
 paired, I think these swallows sometimes pass the 
 night in the woods, but not if an old disused chim 
 ney is handy. 
 
 One evening in early May my attention was ar 
 rested by a band of them containing several hundred, 
 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. Pres 
 ently 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 
 Btowed away. Passing by the place a few days af 
 terward, I saw a board reaching from the roof of the 
 building to the top of the chimney, and imagined 
 Borne curious person or some predacious boy had been 
 up to take a peep inside, and see how so many swal 
 lows could dispose of themselves in such a space. I 
 would have been an interesting spectacle to see then 
 emerge from the chimney in the morning.
 
 APRIL.
 
 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 win 
 ter'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 cat 
 tle 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 
 m the middle of the day, the clear piping of the little 
 frogs in the marshes at sundown, the camp-fire in the 
 vagar-bush, the smoke seen afar rising over the treea
 
 110 APRIL. 
 
 the tinge of green that comes so suddenly on the 
 Bunny 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 meadow-lark. 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 af 
 fording the bees their first pollen, or did it come 
 from much farther from beyond the horizon, the ac 
 cumulated 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
 
 APRIL. Ill 
 
 they are not so ineffable and immaterial and so stim 
 ulating 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 unfold 
 ing and the last snow-flake dissolves in mid-air. It is 
 the first of May when the first swallow appears, when 
 the whip-poor-will is heard, when 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 de-
 
 112 APRIL. 
 
 lights 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 mountain 
 ous, 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 road-side 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 in- 
 Sates 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 verj
 
 APRIL. 113 
 
 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 quicken 
 ing ray of spring has first fallen. And it often hap 
 pens that he is stoned for his pains by the yet un- 
 pacified 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 confi 
 dence, 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 coun 
 try it is a pure spring melody. The little piper will 
 sometimes climb a bullrush, 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 crack 
 ling. 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. 
 There is yet in my mind some uncertainty about the 
 truth of the opinion held by naturalists, that these 
 little frogs presently take to the trees and become the 
 well-known "tree-toads" whoss call so frequently 
 announces rain. 
 
 Then is there anything liks a perfect April morn* 
 8
 
 114 APRIL. 
 
 Ing ? - One hardly knows what the sentiment of it la, 
 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 
 Beems 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 cheewink and the brown 
 thrasher. The robin, bluebird, song-sparrow, phoebe- 
 bird, etc., 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 
 cat-bird and mocking-bird, delights in a high branch 
 of some solitary tree whence it will pour out its rich 
 and intricate warble for an hour together. This tird 
 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 gun-lock. 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
 
 APRIL. 115 
 
 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 cheewink 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 complement 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 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 toj^ 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 
 is an ornithologist, and had made a drawing of the 
 Canada jay which he sent to the President. It was 
 * new bird, and, in reply, Jefferson called his attention 
 jo a " curious bird" which was everywhere to be beard,
 
 116 APRIL. 
 
 but scarcely ever to be seen. He had for twenty yearf 
 interested the young sportsmen of his neighborhood tc 
 shoot one for him, but without success. " It is in al 
 the forests, from spring to fall ; " he says, in his letter 
 u 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 nightin 
 gale. 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 mocking-bird, 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. Ran 
 dolph pronounced it a fly-catcher, which was a good 
 way wide of the mark. Jefferson must have seen 
 only the female, after all his tramp, from his descrip 
 tion 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^nown 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 ;heir line, very curious, or entirely 
 new, and who set the man of science agog by a de 
 scription of the supposed novelty, a description that 
 generally fits the facts of the case about as well as 
 four coat fits the chair-back. Strange and curiou
 
 APRIL. 117 
 
 things in the air. and in the water, and in the earth 
 beneath, are seen every day except by those who are 
 Booking for them, namely, the naturalists. When Wil 
 son 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 lields 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 meadow-lark. 
 What a twang there is about this bird, and what 
 vigor ! It smacks of the soil. It is the winged em 
 bodiment 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 cross-bow; it is a little too sharp and piercing 
 when near at hand, but heard in the proper perspec 
 tive, 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 mel 
 ancholy. At times it indulges in something much 
 more intricate and lark-like while hovering on the 
 wing in mid-air, but a song is beyond the compass of 
 its instrument, and the attempt usually ends in a break 
 down. A clear, sweet, strong, high-keyed note, ut 
 tered 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. If
 
 118 APRIL. 
 
 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 
 ftshamed to turn to the morning sun, while its coat 
 of mottled gray is in perfect keeping with the stub 
 ble amid which it walks. 
 
 The two lateral white quills in its tail seem strictly 
 La 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 be 
 lieve 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 ol 
 the high-hole, or golden-shafted wood-pecker. It is 
 quite as strong as that of the meadow-lark, but not 
 BO long-drawn and piercing. It is a succession of 
 short notes rapidly uttered, as if the bird said, " if-if- 
 if'tf-tf-tf-tf" The note of the ordinary downy, 01 
 hairy woodpecker, suggests, in some way, the sounc 
 of a steel punch ; but that of the high-hole is mucl
 
 APRIL. 119 
 
 Bofter, and strikes on the ear with real spring-time 
 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. In 
 deed, 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 
 brmer. As soon as the other birds begin to build, 
 they are on the qui vive, prowling about like gyp 
 sies, 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 there 
 fore there can be little or no rivalry or competition 
 oetween the males, one wonders in view of Dar 
 vin'a teaching why one sex should have brighter
 
 120 APRIL. 
 
 and richer plumage than the other, which is the fact. 
 The males are easily distinguished from the dul! 
 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 arrive in April ; with us, their appearance is 
 several weeks 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 some 
 times 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 unwont to sing 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 wilder 
 ness of clouds and chilliness into one of these blue 
 mnlit spaces. How the voyagers rejoiced ! Invalids 
 same forth, old men sauntered down the street, stocks 
 tfent up, and the political outlook brightened. 
 
 Such days bring out the last of the hibernating ani 
 mals. The woodchuck unroUs and creeps out of hit
 
 APRIL. 121 
 
 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 snow-drift 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. 
 
 1 think April is the best month to be born in. One 
 fe just in time, so to speak, to catch the first train 
 which is made up in this month. My April chickens
 
 122 APRIL. 
 
 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 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*
 
 SPRING POEM?
 
 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 every thing, 
 That heavy Saturn laughed and leaped with him." 
 
 The following poem from Tennyson's " In Memo- 
 riam," might be headed " April," and serve as descrip- 
 *ive 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 SOCKS are whiter down the vale, 
 And milkier every milky sail 
 On winding stream or distant sea;
 
 126 SPRING POEMS. 
 
 " Where now the sea-mew pipes, or dives 
 In yonder greening gleam, anil rly 
 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." 
 
 lu the same poem the poet asks : 
 
 M Can trouble live with April days ? " 
 
 Yet they .re 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 attitud * of memory and stands with reverted look. 
 The haze 'hat 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 happj T -mournful days; 
 *e 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 hei
 
 SPRING POEMS. 127 
 
 K 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 leaa 
 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 emi 
 nently successful in depicting spring. The humid 
 season with its tender melting blue sky, its fresh 
 earthly smells, its new furrow, its few simple signs 
 and awakenings here and there, and its strange feel 
 ing 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 
 ink-horns. 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 cur 
 rent, too, of joy and fresh new life and appetite in 
 Burns. 
 
 In spring everything has such a margin ; there are 
 luch spaces of silence. The influences are at work
 
 128 SPBING POEMS. 
 
 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, etc., 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 our 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 sat 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 sweet bower, 
 
 The periwinkle trailed its wreaths ; 
 And 't is my faith ttiat every flower 
 Enjoys the air it breathes. 
 
 M The birds around me hopped and played ; 
 Their thoughts I cannot measure ;
 
 SPRING POEMS. 129 
 
 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 an universal birth, 
 
 From heart to heart is stealing, 
 From earth to man, from man to earth; 
 
 It is the hour of feeling. 
 
 x 
 
 " One moment now may give us more 
 
 Than fifty years of 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 repenting 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 ! " 
 9
 
 130 SPRING POEMS. 
 
 Though there are so few good poems especially com 
 memorative 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 Words 
 worth 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 spring-time upon it is the 
 Btory 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 spring-time 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:'
 
 SPRING POEMS. 131 
 
 " 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 tue earth renews, 
 The wealth of forms, the flush of hues ; 
 Joy shed in rosy waves abroad 
 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 cer 
 tain but 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 reck 
 less abandon of the male bird when he is winning his 
 mate. It is full also of the tantalizing suggestive- 
 ness the half lights and shades of April and May. 
 Of prose-poets who have the charm of the spring 
 time upon them, the best recent example I know of 
 is Bjornson, the Norwegian romancist. What espe 
 cially makes his books spring-like is their freshness 
 &nd sweet good faith. There is also a reticence and 
 an un wrought suggestiveness about them that is like 
 the promise of buds and early flowers. Of Turge- 
 neiff, the Russian, much the same thing might be said. 
 *Iis 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.
 
 OUR RURAL DIVINITY
 
 OUR RURAL DIVINITY. 
 
 I WONDER that Wilson Flagg did not include the 
 cow among his " Picturesque Animals," for that ia 
 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, her 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 hill 
 sides, 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
 
 136 OUR RUBAL DIVINITY. 
 
 stack in the field upon the new snow surely the cow 
 is a picturesque animal, and all her goings and com 
 ings are pleasant to behold. 
 
 I looked into Hamerton's clever book on the do 
 mestic 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 hol 
 low, as the farmer says. And again, if it be spring 
 time 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, 
 th ire is her alarmed or distressed low, when deprived 
 of her calf, or separated from her mates her low 
 of affection. Then there is her call of hunger, a pe 
 tition for food, sometimes full of impatience, or her 
 answer to the farmer's call, full of eagerness. Then 
 *here 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 na 
 tive cry of the clan. When she is gored or in great 
 danger she bawls also, but that is different And
 
 OUR RURAL DIVINITY. 137 
 
 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 lo 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
 
 138 OUR RURAL DIVINITY. 
 
 In deep brahminual philosophy. 
 She chews the cud of sweetest revery 
 Above your wordly 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 remem 
 ber 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 land 
 ing upon these shores, and up on to his feet in an in 
 credibly 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 
 ig only a large-lettered rendering of the commonest 
 facts. 
 
 The horse belongs to the fiery god Mars. He fa 
 vors 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 cat 
 tle upon a thousand hills denote that peace and plenty 
 Dear sway in the laud. The neighing of the hors
 
 OUR RURAL DIVINITY. 139 
 
 is a call to battle ; but the lowing of old Brockleface 
 in the valley brings the golden age again. The sav 
 age tribes are never without the horse ; the Scythians 
 are all mounted ; but the cow would tame and hu 
 manize them. When the Indians will cultivate the 
 cow, I shall think their civilization fairly begun. Re 
 cently, when the horses were sick with the epizootic, 
 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, bulky, ru 
 minating, fragrant-breathed, when he came to town 
 the spirit and suggestion of all Georgics and Bucolics 
 came with him. 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 
 Sive where the moose and the deer could. If there
 
 140 OUR RURAL DIVINITY. 
 
 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 past 
 urage 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 high 
 ways, 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. Prof. Boyesen describes what 
 he calls the Sceter, the spring migration of the dairy 
 and dairy maids, 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 milk-maid. The 
 whole herd comes winding down the mountain side 
 toward the Sceter 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 virtu 
 of brutes.
 
 OUR RURAL DIVINITY. 141 
 
 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, al 
 ways dewy nose of hers is just the suggestion of 
 green sward. 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 not upper 
 teeth ; she crops. But on the lower slopes, and mar 
 gins, 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 agricult 
 ure of no country can long thrive without her. Not 
 only a large part of the real, but much of the poten 
 tial 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 revery. 
 
 I have said the cow has not been of much service
 
 142 OUR RURAL DIVINITY. 
 
 to the poets, and yet I remember that Jean Lngelow 
 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 sprang 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 disposi 
 tion. 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 's gener 
 ally the most peaceful and law-abiding cow in the lot, 
 nd the least bullying and quarrelsome. But she is 
 not to be trifled with; her will is law; the whole
 
 OUR RURAL DIVINITY. 143 
 
 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 al 
 ways 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 
 s seldom the case that one rules all the herd, if it 
 number many, but that there is often one that will rule
 
 L44 OUR RURAL DIVINITY. 
 
 Dearly 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 feed 
 ing out of a large bin in the centre of the yard six 
 oxen who mastered right through in succession from 
 No. 1 to No. 6 ; but No. 6 paid off" the score by whip 
 ping No. 1. I often watched them when they were 
 all trying to feed out of the box, and of course trying, 
 dog-in-the-manager fashion, each to prevent any other 
 he 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. But there are always Napo 
 leons 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 
 eettled, and some one cow becomes the acknowledged 
 ruler. 
 
 The bully of the yard is never the master, but usu 
 ally a second or third rate pusher that never losei
 
 OUR RURAL DIVINITY. 145 
 
 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 at *>ay behind her 
 till she sees a pair of threatening horns pressing to 
 wards 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 
 
 I 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. Cu- 
 vier 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 
 10
 
 146 OUR RURAL DIVINITY. 
 
 time it plays " 'possum," assumes to be dead or asleep, 
 till on finding th's ruse does not succeed, it mounts 
 to its feet, bleats loudly and fiercely, and charges des 
 perately 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 high 
 way. 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 awak 
 ened at night by the squeaking and crunching of 
 those piratical jaws under the window or in the di 
 rect on 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 he;
 
 OUR RURAL DIVINITY. 147 
 
 Mid devour her meal. Yes, life presents but one ab- 
 Borbing 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 imagi 
 nation or 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 knot-hole. 
 At last she learns to open the gate. It is a great tri 
 umph of bovine wit. She does it with her horn or 
 her nose, or may be with her ever ready tongue. 1 
 doubt if she has ever yet penetrated the mystery 
 of the newer patent fastenings ; but the old-fash 
 ioned 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 pas 
 toral 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 
 <rate 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.
 
 148 OUR RURAL DIVINITY. 
 
 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 jvithin 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 sta 
 bles 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 an 
 dent inclosure I took an earth bath twice a day. J
 
 OUR RURAL DIVINITY. 149 
 
 planted myself as deep in the soil as I could to re 
 store the normal tone and freshness of my system, 
 impaired by the above mentioned government ma 
 hogany. 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 in 
 timates 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 fungus, unwhole 
 some growths that a petty, in-doors life was forever 
 fostering in my own moral and intellectual nature. 
 
 But the finishing touch was not given till Chloe 
 came. She was the jewel for which this homely set 
 ting 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 com 
 ing! 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 ex 
 pected a cow." 
 
 " One cask it says here." 
 
 " Well, let 's see it ; I '11 warrant it has horns and is 
 jed by a rope ; " which proved to be the case, for 
 there stood the only object that bore my name, chew 
 ing its cud, on the forward deck. How she liked the
 
 150 OUR RURAL DIVINITY. 
 
 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 streets and upon 
 the commons : goats cropped your rose-bushes 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, or your goat, or 
 your pig led a vagrant, wandering life, and picked 
 up a subsistence wherever they could, like the bees, 
 which was almost everywhere. Your cow went forth
 
 OUR RURAL DIVINITY. 151 
 
 m 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 left her to her own 
 wit, which never failed her. What adventures she 
 had, what acquaintances she made, how far she wan 
 dered, 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 Greeu 
 to-day, or follow the Tiber, or over by the Big 
 Spring, or out around Lincoln Hospital ? She sel 
 dom 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 
 teliberations were longer than ever, and very often I 
 bad to aid her in coming to a decision.
 
 152 OUR RURAL DIVINITY. 
 
 For two summers she was a well-spring 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 con 
 doled 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 market-men. 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 he
 
 OUR RURAL DIVINITY. 153 
 
 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, fur 
 tive, 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 corn 
 stalks, 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, 
 tor one thing, her pedal extremities seem length 
 ened ; 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 huska 
 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 
 nost affectionate brute 1 ever knew. Being deprived 
 _f her calf, she transferred her affections to her mas 
 ter, and would fain have made a calf of him, lowing
 
 154 OUR RURAL DIVINITY. 
 
 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 house 
 hold. This generally had the effect of bringing the 
 object of her affection before her, but in a mood any 
 thing 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 oc 
 casion 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 pre 
 scriptions which T obtained from a German veterinary 
 vargeon, but to no purpose. I imagined her poo
 
 OUR RURAL DIVINITY. 155 
 
 maw distended and inflamed with the baking sodden 
 mass which no physic could penetrate or enliven. 
 
 Thus ended my second venture in live stock. Mj 
 third, which followed sharp upon the heels of this dis 
 aster, 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 hun 
 dred), 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 dol 
 lars. The cow proved to be as blind as a bat, though 
 capable of counterfeiting the act of seeing to per 
 fection. 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 mo 
 ment 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 tel 
 escopic and required a long range.
 
 156 OUR RURAL DIVINITY. 
 
 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 
 
 O 
 
 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 in a measure com 
 pensate her 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 
 wit she had. Being barely able to navigate those 
 ttreets on a calm day, what could she be expected to 
 \o in a tempest ? 
 
 After the storm Ind passed, and near sundown, I sef
 
 OUR RURAL DIVINITY. 157 
 
 jut in quest of her, but could get no clew. 1 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 wag mine. It would be a 
 fit closing of the third act of this pastoral drama. 
 Thitherward I beut 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 descrip 
 tion, 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 
 tences 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. 
 Hut days passed, and no tidings were obtained. 
 Hope began to burn pretty low was indeed on the
 
 158 OUR RURAL DIVINITY. 
 
 point of going out altogether, when one afternoon, as 
 I was strolling over the commons (for iu 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 
 waa brief and touching I
 
 BEFORE GENIUS.
 
 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 Biblical 
 writers would have been superseded by the learned 
 professors and gentlemanly versifiers of later times. 
 Is there, to-day, a popular poet using the English lan 
 guage, who does not, in technical acquirements and in 
 the artificial adjuncts of poetry rhyme, metre, mel 
 ody, 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 old 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 
 ths man behind the book. It is the fashion of the 
 day to attribute all splendid results to genius and cult 
 ure. But genius and culture are not enough. "All 
 Dther knowledge is hurtful to him who has not the 
 11
 
 162 BEFORE GENIUS. 
 
 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 over 
 looked ; and the credit is given to some special facil 
 ity, or 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 propor 
 tion as jt 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 breed 
 ers. 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 the common 
 Nature, and 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 for 
 get or overlook the primary basic qualities, and parade 
 and make much of verbal and technical acquirements 
 that led Huxley to speak with such bitter scorn o. 
 the "senseless caterwauling of the literary classes,''
 
 BEFORE GENIUS. 163 
 
 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 
 power of resistance of a piece of ordnance, upoii 
 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, mak 
 ing the man always superior to his work. He must 
 always leave the impression that if he wanted to pull 
 harder or fly higher he could easily do so. In Homer, 
 there is much that is not directly available for Ho 
 mer's purposes as poet. This is his personality 
 the real Homer which lies deeper than his talents 
 und skill, and which works throxigh these by indirec 
 tions. 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," eays Sir 
 Thomas Browne, " the wonders we seek without us." 
 
 Indeed, there. is a strict moral or ethical dependence 
 of the capacity to conceive or project great things, 
 upon the capacity to be or do them. It is as true 
 as any law of hydraulics or statics, that the work 
 manship of a man can never rise above the level of 
 his character. He can never adequately say or do 
 tnything greater than he himself is. There is no
 
 164 BEFORE GENIUS. 
 
 such thing, for instance, as deep insight iuto the mys 
 tery of Creation, without integrity and simplicity of 
 character. 
 
 In the highest mental results and conditions the 
 whole being sympathizes. The perception of a cer 
 tain 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-reli 
 ance, 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 profes 
 sional skill and sleight of hand, of themselves, are to 
 \te apprized as lightly in letters as in war or govern 
 ment, or any kind of leadership. Strong native qual 
 ities 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 the 
 Arnold and Kiugsley sort ? but, at last, waked up t
 
 BEFORE GENIUS. 166 
 
 discover that behind these brilliant names was no 
 strong, loving man, but only a refined taste, a fertile 
 invention, or a special talent of some kind or another. 
 
 Think of the lather of the modern novel, and the 
 fashion-plate men and women that figure in them. 
 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 inge 
 nuity of the plot, and a silly desire to see how the 
 affair came out. What must be the effect, long con 
 tinued, of this class of jugglers working upon the sym 
 pathies 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 swine-herd entertaining divine Ulysses, or 
 even the solitary watchman, in .^Eschylus' "Agamem 
 non," crouched, like a night-dog, on the roofs of the 
 Atreidae, waiting for the signal fires that should an 
 nounce the fall of s-acred 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, 
 lomethiug more than genius. Here is veracity, 
 iiomely directness, and sincerity, and strong primary
 
 166 BEFORE GENIUS. 
 
 diosyncracies. Here the man enters into the esti 
 mate of the author. There is no separating them, as 
 there never is in great examples. A curious perver- 
 Bity runs through all, but in no way vitiates the re 
 sult. In both his moral and intellectual natures, 
 Carlyle seems made with a sort of stub and twist, 
 like the best gun-barrels. The knoity and corru 
 gated 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 dis 
 belief 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 
 oi 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 o* 
 .he expiring feudal world.
 
 BEFORE GENIUS. 167 
 
 With two or three exceptions, there is little as yet 
 in American literature that shows much advance be 
 yond the merely conventional and scholastic little, 
 I mean, in which one gets a whiff of the strong un- 
 breathed 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 character 
 istic 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 orig 
 inal 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 may be 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 ap 
 peared in our history. How broad, unconventional, 
 and humane ! How democratic ! how adhesive ! No 
 fine arabesque carvings, but strong, unhewn, native 
 raits, and deep lines of care, toil, and human sympa 
 thy. 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 in-
 
 168 BEFORE GENIUS. 
 
 dex of character as the living voice, or the physiog 
 nomy, or the personal presence is. Indeed, it may be 
 eaid 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 hardly be 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 immeas 
 urably short of that of Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 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 out- 
 yard 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 
 fcbove mano3uvring for the applause of his audience '
 
 BEFORE GENIUS. 169 
 
 cr a writer who is willing to make himself of no 
 Recount 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 ^Eschylus," 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 condi 
 tions 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 
 B 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, 
 aaay begin where his predecessor left off, but the poet, 
 or any artist, must go back for a fresh start. With 
 aim it is always the first day of creation, and he must 
 begin at the stump or nowhere.
 
 BEFORE BEAUTY.
 
 BEFORE BEAUTY. 
 
 BEFORE genius is manliness, and before beauty is 
 power. The Russian novelist and poet, Turgeneiff, 
 scattered all through whose works you will find un 
 mistakable traits of greatness, makes one of his char 
 acters 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 pursue it as ornament merely. He built 
 his grand edifice its piers, its vaults, its walls of 
 arick and concrete and then gave it a marble en- 
 felope copied from the Greek architecture. The lat 
 ter could be stripped away, as in many cases it was 
 by the hand of time, and leave the essentials of the
 
 174 BEFORE BEAUTY. 
 
 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 in 
 born fitness and proportion. In other words, " his art 
 was structure refined into beautiful forms, not beauti 
 ful 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 incor 
 porated with; hence the athletic desire and refresh 
 ment 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 nour 
 ished. 
 
 It comes to me there is something implied or un 
 derstood 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; per 
 haps more. There is somehow an immense and unde 
 fined background of vast and unconscionable energy, 
 as of earthquakes, and ocean storms, and cleft mount 
 ains, 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, beautj 
 sickens and dies, or at most has only a feeble ex 
 is brace.
 
 BEFORE BEAUTY. 175 
 
 Nature does nothing merely for beauty ; beauty fol 
 ows as the inevitable result; and the final impression 
 of health and finish which her works make upon the 
 mind is owing as much to these things which are not 
 technically called beautiful, as to those which are. 
 The former give identity to the latter. The one *? 
 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 beau 
 tiful as its stalk and roots. 
 
 Indeed, when I go to the woods or fields, or ascend 
 to the liill-top. 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 re 
 moved, 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 spec 
 tator of, but a participator in it. It is not an adorn 
 ment; its roots strike to the centre of the earth. 
 
 All true beauty in Nature or in art is like the irri- 
 descent 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
 
 176 BEFORE BEAUTY. 
 
 shell ; or like the beauty of health which comes out 
 of and reaches back again to the bones and the diges 
 tion. 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 the 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 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 beau 
 ty'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 
 Dook of poems, like exclaiming, Well, here is the
 
 BEFORE BEAUTY. 177 
 
 beautiful at last divested of everything else, of 
 truth, ot 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 
 lo 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 pre 
 pared for any opulence of color, or vegetation, or 
 freak of form, or display of any kind by its prepon 
 derance of the common, ever-present feature of the 
 earth. The foil is always at hand. In like manner 
 iu 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 ground 
 work War, clinching, tearing, tugging war; in Dante, 
 it is Hell ; iu Milton, Satan and the Fall ; in 
 Shakespeare, it is the fierce Feudal world, with its 
 towering and kingly personalities ; in Byron, it if 
 12
 
 178 BEFORE BEAUTY. 
 
 Revolt and diabolic passion. When we get to Ten 
 nyson 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 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 expla 
 nation ; but to translate Nature into another language 
 to bridge it to us to repeat in some sort, the act 
 of creation itself is the final and crowning triumph 
 
 of poetic art. 
 
 j\ 
 
 n. 
 
 After the critic has enumerated all the stock qual 
 ities of the poet, as taste, fancy, melody, etc., it re 
 mains to be said that unless there is something vo
 
 BEFORE BEAUTY. 179 
 
 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, Leasing, 
 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, flaming 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 
 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 
 irystallic 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 intel 
 lectual persons. In the immortal poems the solids 
 we very few, or do not appear at all as solids at
 
 180 BEFORE BEAUTY. 
 
 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 sol 
 vent, 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 life-like ; far less so than 
 Tennyson's " In Memoriam," which is just as truly a 
 philosophical poem as the " Excursion." (Words 
 worth 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 
 out-door 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 
 s perpetual transition. Everything passes and presses 
 in; there is no pause, no completion, no explanation. 
 To produce and multiply endlessly, without ever reach 
 oig the last possibility of excellence, and without com 
 mitting herself to any end, is the law of Nature.
 
 BEFORE BEAUTY. 181 
 
 These considerations bring us very near the essen 
 tial 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 for 
 ever 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 Cole 
 ridge has intimated. As the latter aims at the par 
 ticular, 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 
 irtist mind, mainly because of its practical bent, its 
 lealthful objectivity. The Greek never looked in 
 ward, but outward. Criticism and speculation were 
 toreign to him. His head shows a very marked pre 
 dominance of the motor and perceptive principle over
 
 182 BEFORE BEAUTY. 
 
 the reflective. The expression of the face is uever 
 what we call intellectual or thoughtful, but command 
 ing. 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 defmiteness 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 In 
 visible, 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 emo 
 tions, is by no means all is not even the deepest 
 part. Beside these and inclosing all, is the general 
 impalpable effect, like a good air, or the subtle pres 
 ence of good spirits, wordless but more potent far 
 than words. As in the superbest person, it is not 
 merely what he or she says, or knows, or shows, or 
 even how they behave, but in the silent qualities like 
 gravitation that insensibly but resistlessly hold ua 
 so in a good Poem, or any other expression of art.
 
 EMERSON.
 
 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 sublima 
 tion 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 ad 
 ipose 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 
 aim of any yet. He can never suffer eclipse. Com 
 pared with the English or German master, he is un 
 doubtedly deficient in viscera, in moral and intellect 
 ual 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 
 cure and compact, like a nut or an egg. Great mat 
 lers and tendencies lie folded in him, or rather are 
 summarized in his pages. He writes short but preg-
 
 186 EMERSON. 
 
 nant chapters on great themes, as in his " English 
 Traits," a book like rich preserves put up pouiid for 
 pound, a pound of Emerson to every pound of John 
 Bull. His chapter on Swedenborg in " Representa 
 tive Men" is a good sample of his power to abbrevi 
 ate 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 ap 
 peared 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 
 ^s Poet alone, I have no doubt of his irremediable 
 ieficiency here. You canot have broad, massive
 
 EMERSON. 187 
 
 effect, deep lights 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 re 
 quire 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 for 
 mula, and how much is impulse, emotion, will-char 
 acter, blood, chyle, etc. 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-fur 
 nace 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. 
 
 O ' 
 
 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 noth 
 ing but personality nothing but human or super 
 human qualities ; to him the elements all took the 
 human shape. Of that vague, spiritual, abstract 
 something which we call Nature he had no concep 
 tion. 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 
 \ngelo, Shakespeare, Byron, Goethe saw mainly
 
 188 EMERSON. 
 
 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 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, revolu 
 tionary 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. Be 
 cause, not less marked than his idealism and mysti 
 cism 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 
 \o we see the native New England traits the alert 
 ness, eagerness, inquisitiveness, thrift, dryness, arch 
 ness, caution, the nervous energy as distinguished from 
 the old English unction and vascular force. How he 
 husbands himself wha' prudence, what economy, 
 always spending up, as he says, and not down. How 
 Jert, how attentive ; what an inquisitor; always ready 
 with some test question, with some fact or idea to
 
 EMERSON. 189 
 
 match or 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 in 
 vestment 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 atten 
 tion to every word that is said, in hope that some 
 thing will be said, some word dropped, that has the 
 ring of the true metal. Apparently he does not per 
 mit 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 bar 
 tered 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 
 ?link and glint of the real coin. 
 
 His earlier writings were more flowing and sugges 
 tive and had reference to larger problems ; but now 
 everything has got weighed and stamped and con 
 verted into the medium of wise and scholarly conver- 
 Billion. It is of great value ; these later essays are s
 
 L90 EMERSON. 
 
 many bags of genuine coin, which it has taken a life 
 time 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 
 BO many strongly stamped medallion-like sayings and 
 distinctions. There is a perpetual refining and re- 
 coining of the current wisdom of life and conversa 
 tion. 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 rough 
 ness, but not to the expense of harmony. He has a 
 wonderful hardiness and push. Where else in litera 
 ture 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 
 impac" with objects and experience is almost without 
 paralle. Everything about a man like Emerson is 
 important. I find his phrenology and physiognomy 
 core than ordinarily typical and suggestive. Look
 
 EMERSON. 191 
 
 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 tran 
 scendent. His mind has the hand's pronounced anat 
 omy, 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 convo 
 lutions 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 re 
 lated. Like the strongly aromatic herbs and simples, 
 sage, mint, wintergreen, sassafras, the least part 
 carries the flavor of the whole. Is there one in 
 different, 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 laid in pickle a long time, and is saturated 
 through and through with the Emersonian brine. In 
 deed, 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 right 
 ful territory ; he is there in proper person to the far 
 thest bound. Not every man is himself and his bes* 
 self s-t all times, and to his finger points. Many grea*
 
 192 EMERSON. 
 
 characters, perhaps the greatest, have more or les? 
 neutral or waste ground. You must penetrate a dis 
 tance 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 appre 
 ciate 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 analo 
 gous to the commoner, slower going elements, as heat, 
 air, fire, water, etc., but is nearer akin to that elusive 
 but potent something we call electricity. It is ab 
 rupt, 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 fore* 
 rato the mind.
 
 EMERSON. 193 
 
 His chief weapon, and one that he never lays down, 
 is identical with that of the great wits ; namely, sur 
 prise. 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 flat 
 ness, 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 au 
 diences for ceaseless intellectual friction and chafing. 
 Hence every sentence is braided hard, and more or 
 less knotted, a?nd though of silk, makes the miud tin 
 gle. He startles by overstatement, by understate 
 ment, 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, 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 bomb 
 shells 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 ap 
 plies 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 
 13
 
 194 EMERSON. 
 
 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 equi 
 librium 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 conies 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, 
 &nd thinking and growing austere, these many gener 
 ations. 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 intensi 
 fied. It does not seem possible for any man to be 
 come just what Emerson is from the stump, though 
 perhaps great men have been the fruit of one gener 
 atlon ; but there is a quality in him, an aroma of fine
 
 EMERSON. 195 
 
 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, etc., or the easy capacity for these things, 
 may be, and to a greater or 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 royster- 
 ers, and all the rank, turbulent, human passions, and 
 is chilled by the thought that perhaps after all Shake 
 speare 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 weighed 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, bar 
 baric human qualities that our culture and pietism 
 lend 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, round- 
 'ng, fructifying powers of the system are in '.he coarse, 
 lark rays the black devil at the base. The angel
 
 196 EMERSON. 
 
 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 vul 
 gar 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 priests' point of view. 
 He described his own state rather than that of man 
 kind when he said, " the human mind stands ever in 
 peiplexity, demanding intellect, demanding sanctity, 
 impatient equally of each without the other." 
 
 Much surprise has been expressed in literary cir 
 cles in this country that Emerson has not followed up 
 vis first off-hand indorsement of Walt Whitman with 
 juller 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 
 'n the manner he was ; and it must have been no or 
 dinary breeze that did it Emerson shares with hi*
 
 EMERSON. 197 
 
 eon temporaries the vast preponderance of the critical 
 and discerning intellect over the fervid, manly quali 
 ties 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, etc., 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 
 trould take Plato and Menu and Moses and Jesus to 
 vomplete 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 beau- 
 Uful, saintly life, but ate, and drank, and reveled, and
 
 198 EMERSON. 
 
 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 Shake 
 speare would have been to cease to be a poet and be 
 come a mystic or 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 geoliau 
 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. Wm. 
 Rossetti has made a suggestive remark about him 
 He is not so essentially a poet, says this critic, as ha 
 is a Druid that wanders among the bards and strikei 
 fce harp with even more than bardic stress.
 
 EMERSON. 199 
 
 Not in the poetry of any of his contemporaries ia 
 there such a burden of the mystery of things or such 
 round wind -harp tones, 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 intellect 
 ual 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 beau* if ul 
 *nd the good.
 
 200 EMERSON. 
 
 n. 
 
 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. Ho 
 is one of those men whom the gods drive with blind 
 ers on, so that they see fiercely in only a few direc 
 tions. 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 human 
 ity, 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 prefer 
 ence of the metaphysical poet throughout his writ 
 ings. 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 Tenny 
 son 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 
 Ivhoieness, and the well-being of man, are more in the 
 keeping of Shakespeare than in the hands of Zoroas 
 ter or any of the saints. I doubt if that rarefied air 
 will make good red blood and plenty of it.
 
 EMERSON. 20] 
 
 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 has numerous sub-headings 
 as " Poetry," " Imagination," " Creation," " Mor 
 als," and "Transcendency;" but it is 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 ol 
 Nature and the abysms of aboriginal man, as in Walt
 
 202 EMERSON. 
 
 Whitmai 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 prefer 
 ences, 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 Emer 
 son, quoting the scientist ; and every great poet com 
 plements 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 di 
 rection, if indeed another step could be taken in 
 that direction, and not step off. He is a prisoner on 
 his peak. lie cannot get away from the old themes. 
 His later essays are upon essentially the same sub 
 jects as his first. He began by writing upon nature, 
 greatness, manners, art, poetry, etc., and he is still 
 writing upon them. He is a husbandman who prac 
 tices no rotation of crops, but submits to the exhaust 
 ive process of taking about the same things from hia 
 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 re- 
 eeled, at least in conviction and will, which is alway
 
 EMERSON. 203 
 
 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 hia 
 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 en 
 shrined 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 ma.kes 
 a dead set at praising eloquence I find myself in 
 stantly 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, 1 
 *m filled with a perverse envy of all the confused arid 
 stammering heroes of history. Is Washington falter 
 ing out a few broken and ungrammatical sentences iu
 
 204 EMERSON. 
 
 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 cheer 
 fully 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 P^merson 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 cool 
 ness, his self-possession, and that kind of uncompro 
 mising 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 con 
 cessions, 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 
 jf 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 thou
 
 EMERSON. 205 
 
 sand 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 hesitat 
 ing, indefinite creatures, you uncertain around the 
 edges, you non-resisting, and you heroes, whose cour 
 age 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 oi 
 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 uni 
 versal conditions, or to human nature in its broadest, 
 leepest, strongest phases. His thought is far above 
 the great sea level of humanity, where stand most of 
 Uie world's masters. He is like one of those mar-
 
 206 EMERSON. 
 
 velously clear mountain lakes whose water line 
 above all the salt seas of the globe. He is very pre 
 vious, 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, re 
 porting where I touch bottom and where 1 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 may 
 be 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 vul 
 gar sympathy makes mortals of us all, and I think 
 Emerson's poetry finally lacks just that human color 
 ing and tone, that flesh tint of the heart, that 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 infair 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 le* 
 into another realm unlocked for, where daring and 
 imagination also lead. The secret and suppressed
 
 EMERSON. 207 
 
 !ieart finds a champion. To the young man fed upon 
 the penny precepts and staple Johnsonianism of Eng 
 lish literature, and of what is generally doled out in 
 the schools and colleges, it is a surprise ; it is a rev 
 elation. A new world opens before him. The neb 
 ulae of his spirit are resolved or shown to be irre 
 solvable. The fixed stars of his inner firmament 
 are brought immeasurably near. He drops all other 
 books. Me 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 senti 
 ment. He leads in our time and country, one illus 
 trious 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 gener 
 ous 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 
 olood like a bugle call : beauty, bravery, and a sacred
 
 208 EMERSON. 
 
 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 his 
 tory in his own person. He must sit solidly at home, 
 and not suffer himself to be bullied by kings or em 
 pires, but know that he is greater than all the geog 
 raphy and all the government of the world ; he must 
 transfer the point of view from which history is com 
 monly 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 Prog 
 ress," and I pity the man who has not tasted its intox 
 ication, 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, re 
 ligions, fall before the glance of the hero's eye. Art 
 and literature, Shakespeare, Angelo, ./Eschylus, are 
 humble suppliants before you, the king. The com 
 monest 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 exagger
 
 EMERSON. 209 
 
 ation ; 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 can 
 not repeat. He is but a bridge to other things ; he 
 gets you over. He is an exceptional fact in liter 
 ature, say they, and does not represent lasting or uni 
 versal 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 ro 
 mancers, 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 suc- 
 teeding 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 
 14
 
 210 EMERSON. 
 
 common property of the race. All the masters prob 
 ably had some peculiar import or tie to their con 
 temporaries 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.
 
 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE.
 
 TO WALT WHITMAN. 
 
 M /, thirty-six yean old, in perfect health, begin, 
 Hoping to cease not till death.'' 1 
 
 CHANTS DEMOCRATIC 
 
 They say that thou art sick, art frowiug 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 Qod ; oh sing it thou I 
 
 ARRAS LSIOH (England)
 
 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE. 
 
 WHOEVER has witnessed the flight of any of the 
 birds, as the eagle, the condor, the sea-gulls, the 
 proud hawks, etc., has perhaps felt that the poetic 
 suggestion of the feathered tribes is not all confined 
 to the sweet and tiny songsters the thrushes, cana 
 ries, and mocking-birds 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 charac 
 ter 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, iu 
 " 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 re 
 cherche aroma of the accepted poets of Europe or his 
 own country ; but his compass and general harmony 
 are infinitely greater. The sweeaiess 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
 
 214 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE. 
 
 them more likely because he disdains them. But 
 there is an electric living soul in his poetry, far mom 
 fermenting and bracing. His wings do not glitter in 
 their movement from rich and vari-colored 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 les 
 sons but there is the delighting of the eye and soul 
 through that soaring and circling in the vast empy 
 rean 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 unparal 
 bled audacity of his undertaking, and the absence
 
 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE. 215 
 
 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 en 
 dowments instead of upon aboriginal power and man 
 hood. 
 
 My own mastery of the poet, incomplete as it is, 
 has doubtless been much facilitated by contact 
 talks, meals, jaunts, etc. with him, stretching 
 through a decade of years, and by seeing how every 
 thing in his personnel was resumed and carried for 
 ward 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 perceptives 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 indica 
 tive hi a man as in a horse), his voice. In Whitman 
 all these things are remarkably striking and sugges*
 
 216 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE. 
 
 tive. His face exhibits a rare combination of har 
 mony and sweetness with strength, strength like 
 the vaults and piers of the Roman architecture. 
 Sculptor never carved a finer ear or a more imagina 
 tive brow. Then his heavy-lidded, absorbing eye, 
 his sympathetic voice, and the impression which he 
 makes of starting from the broad bases of the uni 
 versal 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 excep 
 tional 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 ele 
 mental 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 per 
 sonality, 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 evei storm and gale drove ship to ruin. These
 
 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE. 217 
 
 volcanic emotional fires appear everywhere in his 
 books, and it is really these, aroused to intense activ 
 ity and unnatural strain during the four years of the 
 war, and persistent labors in the hospitals, that have 
 resulted in his illness and paralysis since. 
 
 It has been impossible, I say, to resist these per 
 sonal 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 
 thf drama of himself, played upon various and succes 
 sive stages of nature, history, passion, experience, 
 patriotism, etc., 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 assimila 
 tion 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 ob 
 jects in the open air, and makes them either forbid 
 ding 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 Eu 
 rope. The poets there, almost without exception, 
 recognize his transcendent quality, the men of sci
 
 218 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE. 
 
 ence his thorough scientific basis, the republicans his 
 inborn democracy, and all his towering picturesque 
 personality and modernness. Prof. Clifford says he 
 is more thoroughly in harmony with the spirit and 
 letter of advanced scientism than any other living 
 poet. Prof. Tyrrell and Mr. Symonds find him em 
 inently 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 trans 
 lated 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 stil] 
 too tough for her offspring. 
 
 When I first fell in with u 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 weie 
 vexing me. The following, though less here than 
 when encountered in the frame of miud which the 
 poet begets in you, curiously settled and stratified a 
 tertain range of turbid fluctuating inquiry :
 
 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE. 219 
 
 ' There was never any more inception than there is now, 
 Nor any more youth cr 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 
 tould 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 seme- 
 thing far deeper than the words or 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 awk 
 wardness, 
 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 ade 
 quate conception, and it was not till many years, and 
 after I had known the poet himself, as already stated 
 hat I saw in it a teeming, rushing globe well worthy
 
 220 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE. 
 
 my best days and strength to surround and compre 
 hend. 
 
 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 some 
 thing higher and deeper than the influence or perusal 
 of any or all books, or all other productions of gen 
 ius 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 be 
 coming so, of the spirit of Nature, through the visi 
 ble objects of the universe, and his affiliation with 
 them subjectively and objectively. Not more surely 
 js the blood quickened and purified by contact witk
 
 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE. 221 
 
 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 
 p ullest operatic launching fortn of the voice, though 
 it sounded strangely at first, and required the ear to
 
 222 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE. 
 
 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 
 oue would not care to lose. There is symmetry and 
 proportion in the sonnet, but to me there is some 
 thing I would not exchange for them in the wild 
 swing and balance of many unmeasured and un- 
 rhymed passages in Shakespeare: like the one for in 
 stance 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 thott 
 orbs, and the pleasure and knowledge of everything in them 
 thatt we be fiWd and satisfied then f 
 
 Ajid my Spirit said, A'o, we but level that lift, to pau and con 
 tinue beyond."
 
 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE. 223 
 
 Such breaking with the routine poetic, and with 
 the grammar of verse, was of course a dangerous ex 
 periment, 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 
 help^j. If interior, spontaneous rhythm could not be 
 relied upon, 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, to the stereotyped 
 metres and stock figures they find ready to their 
 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 the sense of tune, and of carefully carved 
 and modeled forms, and is not meant to arouse the 
 toul with the taste of powor, and tc start off or
 
 224 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE. 
 
 journeys for itself. But the great inspired utter 
 ances, 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 
 stand-point, proportion, continence, self-control, 
 unfaltering adherence to natural standards, subordi 
 nation of parts, perfect adjustment of the means to 
 the end, obedience to inward law, no trifling, no lev 
 ity, 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 ac 
 ceptance 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 home 
 liness 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 suumer 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, a
 
 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE. 220 
 
 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 bid* 
 fair to worry the mother completely out, besides be 
 coming a howling nuisance to everybody. As the car 
 tugs around Capitol Hill the young one is more de 
 moniac 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 bu( 
 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 scream 
 ing, and as the man adjusts it more securely to his 
 breast, plants its chubby hands against him, and push 
 ing 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 unin 
 terrupted 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 con 
 ductor 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 go ou as needed, and 
 15
 
 226 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE. 
 
 eeems 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 cool, and recover herself. 
 
 n. 
 
 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 lo 
 cated 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 bflood of critics over the golden egg 
 that had been uncovered ? This I reckon would be 
 a favorite passage with all : 
 
 " Yon 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 readj 
 
 graves ! 
 
 Howler and scooper of storms! capricious and dainty sea ! 
 I am integral with you I too am of one phase, and of a] 
 
 phases."
 
 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE. 227 
 
 This other passage would afford many a text for the 
 (moralists arid essayists : 
 
 Of persons arrived at high positions, ceremonies, wealth, schol 
 arship, 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 Whit 
 man had never existed, and some bold essayist, like 
 Mr. Higginson or Mathew Arnold had projected him 
 k u abstract, outlined him on a scholarly ideal back 
 ground, formulated and put in harmless critical pe 
 riods the principles of art which he illustrates, and 
 vhich are the inevitable logic of his poems said es 
 sayist 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
 
 228 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE. 
 
 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 him 
 self. Indeed, I could not help wondering how many 
 of those appreciative listeners had any original satis 
 faction 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 schol 
 arly 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? 1 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 
 down-stairs, as at an alarm of fire. 
 
 One great service of Walt Whitman is that he ex 
 erts a tremendous influence to bring the race up on 
 this nether side, to place the emotional, the assimila 
 tive, 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 couutn
 
 THE FL'WIT OF THE EAGLE. 229 
 
 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 ne 
 cessitate and imply than in what they sa). 
 
 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 be 
 coming 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 
 woman rich above all things in the genial human at 
 tributes, one " nine times folded " in an atmosphere 
 of tenderest, most considerate humanity, an atmos 
 phere 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 inter 
 course with such a character is not merely intellect 
 ual ; it is deeper and better than that. Walter Scott 
 carried such a fund of sympathy and good-will that 
 even the animals found fellowship with him, and the 
 pigs understood his great heart. 
 
 It was the large endowment of Whitman, in hia 
 i wn character, in this respect, that made his services 
 u the army hospitals, during the war, so ministering 
 nd effective, and that renders his " Drum-taps" the 
 tenderest and most deeply yearning and sorrowful ex
 
 230 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE. 
 
 pression of the human heart in poetry that ever wai 
 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 mount 
 ain, and feel its bracing, rugged air. 
 
 Without a certain self-surrender there is no great 
 ness possible in literature, any more than in religion, 
 or in anything else. It is always a trait of the mas 
 ter, 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. Whit 
 man 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 who 
 ever and whatever will receive him. There is no 
 competition between himself and his subject ; he is 
 not afraid of overpraising, or making too much of 
 the commonest individual. What exalts others ex 
 alts him. 
 
 We have had great help in Emerson in certain 
 ways first class service. He probes the conscience 
 ind the moral purpose as few men have done, anc*
 
 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE. 231 
 
 gives much needed stimulus there. But after him, 
 the need is all the more pressing for a broad, power 
 ful, opulent, human personality to absorb these ideals, 
 and 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 unspeak 
 ably precious. I do not know where this evidence ia 
 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, arid this, it seems to me, is also the great les 
 son 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, suffi 
 cient to produce a man of the largest mould, and the 
 most audacious and unco^querab'e egoism, and on a 
 oii.ue the last to be reached by these qualities; a mar
 
 232 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE. 
 
 of antique stature, of Greek fibre and gripe, with sci 
 ence and the modern added, without abating one jot 
 or tittle of his native force, adhesiveness, American 
 ism, 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 re 
 spectability, half dead with ennui and routine, etc., 
 and find an agreeable change in the daring unconven- 
 tionality 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 confection 
 ery, 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 nourish 
 ing home-brewed, has died out, and in its place there 
 is a sickly cadaverousness that must be pampered and 
 corseted. Among educated people here there is a 
 mania for the bleached, the double refined; whitt
 
 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE. 233 
 
 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 Whit 
 man is more read abroad than in his own country. 
 It is on the rank, human, and emotional side sex, 
 magnetism, health, physique, etc. that he is so full. 
 Then his receptivity and assimilative powers are enor 
 mous, and he demands these in his reader. In fact, 
 his poems are physiological as much as they are in 
 tellectual. 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 be 
 fore in poetry has the body received such ennoble 
 ment. The great theme is IDENTITY, arid 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 lie 
 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 
 ais work in this direction is invaluable. Well has it 
 jeen said that the man or woman who has " Leaves 
 .f Grass" for a daily companion will be under the 
 constant, invisible influence of sanity, cleanliness, 
 strength, and a gradual severance from all that cor 
 rupts and makes morbid and mean.
 
 234 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE. 
 
 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 Person 
 ality of the poet himself. As in Shakespeare every 
 thing 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 Person 
 ality behind it, and derives its chief significance there 
 from. In other words, " Leaves of Grass " is essen 
 tially 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 Na 
 tionality. 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 de 
 scent; 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 
 B,nd goes forward and is not dropped by death ;" how he 
 .s 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 ia 
 ample and composite, and cannot fail us, to show
 
 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE. 235 
 
 11 this, I say, not as in a lecture or critique, but 
 suggestively and inferentially, to work it out freely 
 and picturesquely, with endless variations, with per 
 son 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 op 
 portunities, 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, etc., all illustrated in the poet's own character. 
 Himself is 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 concep 
 tion or an idea that spheres it and makes it whole. It 
 K completed, distinct, and separate, might be his, or 
 might be any man's. It carries his quality, but it is 
 thing of itself, and centres and depends upon itself. 
 Whether or not the world will hereafter consent, as
 
 236 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE. 
 
 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, in 
 definite dynamics, formless, constantly emanating from 
 the living centre, and they carry the quality of the au 
 thor'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 Cap 
 tain," " 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-chas 
 ings," etc., are out-flamiugs, out-rushirigs 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 emo 
 tion, but at the same time of sane and beneficent po 
 tentiality. .Neither in it nor in either of the others 
 is there the building up of a fair verbal structure,
 
 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE. 237 
 
 symmetrical piece of mechanism, whose last stone is 
 implied and necessitated in the first. 
 
 " The critic's great error," says Heine, " lies in ask 
 ing ' 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 (neces 
 sarily 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 ob 
 jection 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, etc., 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 with 
 out form ; but there is no want of form in the ele 
 mental laws and effusions in fire, or water, or rain, 
 01 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 consid 
 eration of constructive form ? Under the influence 
 of the expansive, creative force that plays upon me 
 f rom these pages, like sunlight or gravitation, th
 
 238 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE. 
 
 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 pas 
 sages with reference far more to their position, in 
 terpretation, and scanning ages hence, than for cur 
 rent 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 occupa 
 tions, would not be so repellant 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 in doors and out, all passing in 
 quick succession before you. They have in the full 
 est measure what Lessing demands in poetry, tho 
 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 senti 
 ment ; 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 ol 
 objects, actions, shows, etc., there are sure to occur 
 lin*>o of perfect description :
 
 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE. 239 
 
 Where the heifers browse where geese nip their food with shor* 
 
 jerks ; 
 Where sun-down shadows lengthen over the limitless and lone 
 
 some 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 to 
 ward 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 the 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 di 
 verse ! 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 Amer 
 ica, 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.
 
 240 TUB FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE. 
 
 In the " Carol of Occupations " occur, too, those 
 formidable inventories of the more heavy and coarse 
 grained 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 cut 
 ter's cleaver,' ' the packer's maul,' etc., met with a 
 change of heart, and been converted into celestial cut 
 lery ? " I answer, No, they are as barren of poetry as 
 a desert 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 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. Re 
 member, too, that Whitman declaredly writes the 
 lyrics of America, of the masses, of democracy, and o* 
 the practical labor of mechanics, boatmen, and farm 
 ers: 
 
 " The sum of all known reverence I add up in you, whoever yon 
 
 are ; 
 
 All doctrines, all politics and civilization, exude from you ; 
 All sculpture and monuments, and anything inscribed anywheri 
 
 are tallied in you ; 
 The gist of histories and statistics as far hack as the record; 
 
 reach, is in you this hour, and myths and tales the sane* ;
 
 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE. 241 
 
 If you were not breathing and walking here, where would they 
 
 albe ? 
 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 V 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 ignor 
 ing of conventional and social distinctions and pro 
 hibitions, 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 per- 
 petuator 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 neces 
 sity as (hat which makes the anatomist or physiologist 
 not pass by, or neglect, or falsify, the loins of his 
 typical personage. All the passages and allusions 
 16
 
 242 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE. 
 
 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 for 
 bidden 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 irre 
 deemable, 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 sam 
 ple of Man, each after its kind, its period, its na 
 tionality, 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 gor 
 geous action and events, the distinct personal identity 
 the heroic and warlike chieftain of Hellas onlj 
 permanently remains. In the same way, when the 
 fire and fervor of Shakespeare's plots and passions 
 subside, the special feudal personality, as lord 01 
 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 " th
 
 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE. 243 
 
 lame red running blood"), " Leaves of Grass" and 
 "Two Rivulets" also bring their contribution, nay, 
 behind every page that is the main purport to out 
 line a New World Man and a New World Woman, 
 modern, complete, democratic, not only fully and 
 nobly intellectual and spiritual, but in the same meas 
 ure 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 inev 
 itable 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 con 
 sistent with, and the outcome of, that something which 
 secures to the race ascendency, empire, and perpe 
 tuity ? 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 
 js your masterpiece the standard-bearer of this quality 
 i helping the race to victory ? helping me to be more 
 than I otherwise would ?
 
 244 THE FLIGHT OF THE EA1LE. 
 
 III. 
 
 Not the least of my poet's successes is in hij 
 thorough assimilation of the modern sciences, trans 
 muting them into strong poetic nutriment, and the 
 extent to which all his main poems are grounded in 
 the deepest principles of modern philosophical in 
 quiry. 
 
 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, 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 neces 
 sary 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 ex 
 panses opened up in the physical cosmos by astron 
 omy 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 cf fable and myth 
 that now lies behind us. " Leaves of Grass " is, per 
 haps, the first serious and large attempt at an expres 
 sion in poetry of a knowledge of the earth as one of 
 the orbs, and of man as a microcosm of the whole
 
 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLK. 245 
 
 and to give to the imagination these new and true 
 fields of wonder and romance. In it fable and su 
 perstition are at an end, priestcraft is at an end, 
 skepticism and doubt are at an end, with all the mis 
 givings and dark forebodings that have dogged the 
 human mind since it began to relax its hold upon tra 
 dition 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 syn 
 thesis, 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 dis 
 pelled many illusions, but it has more than com 
 pensated the imagination by the unbounded vistas it
 
 246 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE. 
 
 has opened up on either 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 it3 
 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 discov 
 ery of the correlation and conservation of forces, the 
 identity and convertibility of heat and force and mo 
 tion, and that no ounce of power is lost, but forever 
 passed along, changing form but not essence, is a po 
 etic 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 pleas 
 ure. 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 astron 
 omy and geology is essentially a poetic one, the 
 ove of the marvelous, of the sublime, and of grand
 
 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE. 247 
 
 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 cir 
 cles of the Inferuo 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 Youinans 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 sea 
 sons, 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, etc., in these and many 
 other fields it is hard to tell whether it is the sci 
 entist 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 fic 
 tion, but a reality ; that we are really children of the 
 gun, and that every heart-beat, every pound of force 
 we exert, is a solar emanation. The power witb
 
 248 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGI.E. 
 
 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 quan 
 tity 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 rea 
 sons 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 can 
 alone save us from, the danger that science, ab 
 sorbed 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 
 om, and took sides for or against him. There were 
 uo hing but men and gods in the universe. But in 
 whe results of science the world is more and more
 
 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE. 249 
 
 and man is less and less. The poet must come to 
 the rescue, and place man again at the top, mag 
 nify him, exalt him, reinforce him, and match these 
 wonders from without with equal wonders from with 
 in. 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 savans ! 
 The minor poets do nothing in this direction ; only 
 men of the largest calibre and most heroic fibre are 
 adequate to the service. Hence, one finds in Tenny- 
 Bon a vast deal more science than he would at first 
 suspect ; but it is under his feet ; it is no longer sci 
 ence, but faith, or reverence, or poetic nutriment. It 
 is in " Locksley Hall," " The Princess," " In Memo- 
 riam," " Maud," and in others of his poems. Here 
 is a passage from " In Memoriam " : 
 
 " They say, 
 The sordid 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 types 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 no; as idh ore.
 
 250 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE. 
 
 "But iron dug from central gloom, 
 A ad 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 
 
 Ton orange sunset waning slow; 
 From fringes of the faded eve, 
 
 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 
 fini&h, carries in his moral consciousness the flower, 
 the outcome of all this wide field of turbulent un 
 conscious 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." Befora
 
 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE. 251 
 
 Darwin or Spencer he proclaimed the doctrine oi 
 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. 
 
 11 Ir vain the speeding and shyness , 
 
 In vain the plutonic rocks send their old heat against my ap 
 proach ; 
 
 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 accomplished, and I am encloser 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. 
 
 " Kise 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 fretid 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 boat 
 
 men ; 
 
 For room to me stars kept aside in their own rings; 
 They sent influences to look after what was to hold me.
 
 252 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE. 
 
 * 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 slow strata piled to rest it on, 
 
 Vast vegetables gave it sustenance, 
 
 Monstrous sauroids transported it in their mouths, and depos 
 ited 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 third 
 verse : 
 
 "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 jour 
 ney. 
 
 Akin to this absorption of science is another qual 
 ity in my poet not found in the rest, except perhaps a 
 mere hint of it now and then in Lucretius a qual 
 ity 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-hosom'd night ! Press close, magnetic, nous 
 
 ishing night ! 
 
 Night of south winds! night of the large, few stars I 
 Still, nodding night! mad, naked, summer night 
 
 J Smile, O voluptuous, cool-breath'd earth! 
 Earth of the slumbering and liquid trw
 
 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE. 253 
 
 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 ac 
 counts for what several critics call their sense of 
 magnitude " Something of the vastness of the suc 
 cession of objects in Mature." 
 
 ' 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 cor 
 roborate 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; 
 
 'Tiere shall be no subject too pronounced All works shall 
 illustrate the divine law of indirections." 
 
 Indeed, the earth ever floats in this poet's miud aa
 
 254 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE. 
 
 his mightiest symbol his type of completeness and 
 power. It is the armory from which he draws hia 
 most potent weapons. See, especially, " To the Say- 
 ers 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 to 
 wards 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. 
 
 ** 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, 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 individ 
 uals to each other shall loving good-will exist and be 
 cultivated not only between the different towns 
 und cities, and all the States of this indissoluble com 
 pacted Union but it shall make a tie of fraternity 
 and fusion holding all the races and peoples and coun 
 tries of the whole earth. 
 
 Then the National question. As Whitman's com 
 pleted works now stand, in their two volumes, it is 
 certain they could only have grown out of the Seces 
 sion War; and they will probably go to future ages.
 
 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE. 255 
 
 as ia literature the most characteristic identification 
 of that war risen from and portraying it, repre 
 senting 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 ex 
 pressed, than in these contributions. They comprise 
 two thin volumes now included in " Two Rivulets" 
 
 called " Democratic Vistas," and "Memoranda dur 
 ing the War;" the former exhibiting the personality 
 of the poet in more vehement and sweeping action 
 even than the poems, and affording specimens of soar 
 ing vaticination and impassioned appeal, impossible 
 to match in the literature of our time. The only liv 
 ing 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 
 tails agglomerative, and puts the Addisonian models 
 utterly to rout, a style such as only the largest
 
 256 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE. 
 
 and most Titanic workman could effectively use. A 
 sensitive lady of my acquaintance says reading the 
 "Vistas" is like being exposed to a pouring hail-storm, 
 the words fairly bruise her mind. In its literary 
 construction the book is indeed a shower, or a suc 
 cession 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 tune, those 
 monuments stand those forms of majesty and beauty. 
 For us those beacons burn through all the nights. Un 
 known 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 ; Ro 
 man, 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 paint 
 ers, 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
 
 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE. 257 
 
 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, mov 
 ing 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 demo 
 cratic 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 domi 
 nate, 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, uncom 
 promising 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 thi 
 nation charts of imperial destinies, dazzling as the sun, 
 yet with lines of blood, and many a deep intestine dif 
 ficulty, and human aggregate of cankerous imperfec 
 tion, Saying, Lo 1 the roads, the only plans of devel 
 opment, 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 
 we as of no account making a new history, the history 
 17
 
 258 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE. 
 
 of Democracy, making old history a dwarf I alone in 
 augurating 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 battle-fields, 
 countless maimed and sick in hospitals, treachery among 
 Generals, folly in the Executive and Legislative depart 
 ments, schemers, thieves everywhere cant, credulity, 
 make-believe everywhere. Thought you greatness was 
 to ripen for you, like a pear? If you would have great 
 ness, know that you must conquer it through ages, cent 
 uries 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 in- 
 vigorations 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, and puts in practical form that un 
 precedented and fervid comradeship which is his 
 leading element, even more than his elaborate works. 
 It is printed almost verbatim, just as the notes wert
 
 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE. 259 
 
 jotted down at the time and on the spot. It is im 
 possible 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 pas 
 sages in the "Memoranda" that have amazing dra 
 matic 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 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 mar 
 shaling and grouping together of many facts and 
 details, gathering up, and recruiting, and expanding, 
 as the sentences move along, till the force and mo 
 mentum become like a rolling flood, or an army in 
 echelons on the charge, is here displayed with won 
 derful 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 
 vorks, they have really never yet been published at 
 Ul, 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
 
 260 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE. 
 
 them out, but to all intents and purposes they are 
 unknown. 
 
 I have not dwelt on Whitman's personal circum 
 stances, his age (he is now, 1877, entering his 59th 
 year), paralysis, seclusion, and the treatment of him 
 by certain portions of the literary classes, although 
 those have all been made the subjects of wide discus 
 sion 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 allude to 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 ap 
 peal 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 fran 
 tically once more, hooting behind him, whenever he wends 
 again upon his way." 
 
 Skipping many things I would 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 peru
 
 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE. 261 
 
 lal 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, Tenny- 
 sonian, 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 doubt 
 less 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 
 Sfive themselves at first like the real landscape and 
 die sea, they are all indirections. You may have to 
 try them many times ; there is something of Nature's
 
 262 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE. 
 
 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 mean 
 ing. 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 cer 
 tainly 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 per 
 spective. 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 
 .lie 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 as* 
 cend into spiritual meanings. Indeed, the spirituality
 
 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE. 263 
 
 of Walt Whitman is the chief fact after all, and dom 
 inates 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 quali 
 ties 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 were looking for them in the customary 
 places on the outside where he never puts them, and 
 had not yet penetrated the interiors. As many of the 
 fowls hide their eggs by a sort of intuitive prudery 
 and secretiveness, he 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 Riv 
 ulets." 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 cham 
 bers opening and expanding more an^ more, and 
 continually.