his favourites and touch his heart most intimately. One of his poems called The Nest contrasts May and December. First comes the merry month :Then from the honeysuckle grey The oriole with experienced quest The cordage of his hammock-nest, Of downy breasts and throbbing wings, Thy duty, winged flame of spring, Above the life by mortals led, Master, not slave, of daily bread, Wherever sunshine beckons thee. This is the summer picture; when December comes, there is a sad change; the trees are leafless. And thou, dear nest, whence joy and praise The thankful oriole used to pour, Swing'st empty, while the north winds chase But loyal to the happy past, I love thee still for what thou wast. As usual the poet moralises this very effectively. When in human beings the springs of life are dried up and when our branches, too, show the vacant nests of spring, yet with his optimistic outlook on life he trusts that, like the birds of spring, Our good goes not without repair, But only flies to soar and sing Far off in some diviner air, Where we shall find it in the calms Of that fair garden 'neath the palms. The same image of the forsaken and outworn nest which we found so suggestive to other poets is used in The Parting of the Ways. As old age approaches, the senses are bereft of their keenness and become like superannuated nests. These senses, quivering with electric beats, Too soon will show, like nests on wintry boughs, Which whistling north winds line with downy snow Thither the singing birds no more return. Once more in Auf Wiedersehen the same thought is expressed. Two watched yon oriole's pendent dome, That now is void and dank with rain, The bird to his deserted home The poet measures time by this bird. Instead of saying 'tis fifty years since, he puts it more poetically thus: The oriole's fledglings fifty times Have flown from our familiar elms. The oriole comes into Under the Willows, where his nest-building is fully described. Hush! 'tis he! My oriole, my glance of summer fire, Where his mate dangles at her cup of felt. Now the oriole is an unknown bird to us, but apart from the fact that we have seen it in museums, have seen pictures of it in natural history books and have read of its pendent nest which rocks in the wind, and so forth, we have from these numerous descriptions of it a very good and no doubt absolutely correct idea of the bird-its orange throat, its hanging dome-roofed nest, its cheery note. So is it with the bobolink which is more in evidence even than the oriole. Meanwhile that devil-may-care the bobolink, Just ere he sweeps o'er rapture's tremulous brink, Describing the New England summer which "with one great gush of blossom storms the world," he gives a poetic rendering of the bobolink's song, something after the manner of Tennyson's Throstle : But now, oh rapture! sunshine winged and voiced, Pipe blown through by the warm wild breath of the West, Shepherding his soft droves of fleecy cloud, Gladness of woods, skies, waters, all in one The bobolink has come, and like the soul Gurgles in ecstasy we know not what Save June! Dear June! Now God be praised for June. The bird comes into The Biglow Papers even, no picture of an American June being complete without this feathered songster. June's bridesman, poet o' the year, Gladness on wings, the bobolink is here; Runs down, a brook o' laughter, thru the air. Glancing at the conventions of poets who do not look at things for themselves, or if they do, are afraid to give expression to what they see, preferring to talk o' daisies, larks, an' things Ez though we'd nothin' here that blows an' sings, he roundly affirms :— Why, I'd give more for one live bobolink Than a square mile o' larks in printer's ink. Another bird-the phoebe-so called from its note, has a whole poem devoted to its praise. It sings this plain note at earliest dawn before the other birds are awake, and the poet throws much pathos and imagination into his reflections on the sad, plaintive cadence of this little waif in feathers. It is a wee sad-coloured thing, As shy and secret as a maid, It seems pain-prompted to repeat |