Birds and Poets : with Other Papers Part 2

The other poem I give entire:--

"Up with me! up with me into the clouds!

For thy song, Lark, is strong; Up with me, up with me into the clouds!

Singing, singing, With clouds and sky about thee ringing, Lift me, guide me till I find That spot which seems so to thy mind!

"I have walked through wilderness dreary, And to-day my heart is weary; Had I now the wings of a Faery Up to thee would I fly.

There is madness about thee, and joy divine In that song of thine; Lift me, guide me high and high To thy banqueting-place in the sky.

"Joyous as morning Thou art laughing and scorning; Thou hast a nest for thy love and thy rest, And, though little troubled with sloth, Drunken Lark! thou wouldst be loth To be such a traveler as I.

Happy, happy Liver!

With a soul as strong as a mountain river, Pouring out praise to the Almighty Giver, Joy and jollity be with us both!

"Alas! my journey, rugged and uneven, Through p.r.i.c.kly moors or dusty ways must wind; But hearing thee, or others of thy kind, As full of gladness and as free of heaven, I, with my fate contented, will plod on, And hope for higher raptures, when life's day is done."

But better than either--better and more than a hundred pages--is Shakespeare's simple line,--

"Hark, hark, the lark at heaven's gate sings,"

or John Lyly's, his contemporary,--

"Who is't now we hear?

None but the lark so shrill and clear; Now at heaven's gate she claps her wings, The morn not waking till she sings."

We have no well-known pastoral bird in the Eastern States that answers to the skylark. The American pipit or t.i.tlark and the sh.o.r.e lark, both birds of the far north, and seen in the States only in fall and winter, are said to sing on the wing in a similar strain. Common enough in our woods are two birds that have many of the habits and manners of the lark--the water-thrush and the golden-crowned thrush, or oven-bird. They are both walkers, and the latter frequently sings on the wing up aloft after the manner of the lark. Starting from its low perch, it rises in a spiral flight far above the tallest trees, and breaks out in a clear, ringing, ecstatic song, sweeter and more richly modulated than the skylark's, but brief, ceasing almost before you have noticed it; whereas the skylark goes singing away after you have forgotten him and returned to him half a dozen times.

But on the Great Plains, of the West there; is a bird whose song resembles the skylark's quite closely and is said to be not at all inferior. This is Sprague's pipit, sometimes called the Missouri skylark, an excelsior songster, which from far up in the transparent blue rains down its notes for many minutes together. It is, no doubt, destined to figure in the future poetical literature of the West.

Throughout the northern and eastern parts of the Union the lark would find a dangerous rival in the bobolink, a bird that has no European prototype, and no near relatives anywhere, standing quite alone, unique, and, in the qualities of hilarity and musical tintinnabulation, with a song unequaled. He has already a secure place in general literature, having been laureated by no less a poet than Bryant, and invested with a lasting human charm in the sunny page of Irving, and is the only one of our songsters, I believe, that the mockingbird cannot parody or imitate.

He affords the most marked example of exuberant pride, and a glad, rollicking, holiday spirit, that can be seen among our birds. Every note expresses complacency and glee. He is a beau of the first pattern, and, unlike any other bird of my acquaintance, pushes his gallantry to the point of wheeling gayly into the train of every female that comes along, even after the season of courtship is over and the matches are all settled; and when she leads him on too wild a chase, he turns, lightly about and breaks out with a song is precisely a.n.a.logous to a burst of gay and self-satisfied laughter, as much as to say, _"Ha! ha! ha! I must have my fun, Miss Silverthimble, thimble, thimble, if I break every heart in the meadow, see, see, see!"_

At the approach of the breeding season the bobolink undergoes a complete change; his form changes, his color changes, his flight changes. From mottled brown or brindle he becomes black and white, earning, in some localities, the shocking name of "skunk bird;" his small, compact form becomes broad and conspicuous, and his ordinary flight is laid aside for a mincing, affected gait, in which he seems to use only the very tips of his wings. It is very noticeable what a contrast he presents to his mate at this season, not only in color but in manners, she being as shy and retiring as he is forward and hilarious. Indeed, she seems disagreeably serious and indisposed to any fun or jollity, scurrying away at his approach, and apparently annoyed at every endearing word and look. It is surprising that all this parade of plumage and tinkling of cymbals should be gone through with and persisted in to please a creature so coldly indifferent as she really seems to be. If Robert O'Lincoln has been stimulated into acquiring this holiday uniform and this musical gift by the approbation of Mrs. Robert, as Darwin, with his s.e.xual selection principle, would have us believe, then there must have been a time when the females of this tribe were not quite so chary of their favors as they are now. Indeed, I never knew a female bird of any kind that did not appear utterly indifferent to the charms of voice and plumage that the male birds are so fond of displaying. But I am inclined to believe that the males think only of themselves and of outshining each other, and not at all of the approbation of their mates, as, in an a.n.a.logous case in a higher species, it is well known whom the females dress for, and whom they want to kill with envy!

I know of no other song-bird that expresses so much self-consciousness and vanity, and comes so near being an ornithological c.o.xcomb. The red-bird, the yellowbird, the indigo-bird, the oriole, the cardinal grosbeak, and others, all birds of brilliant plumage and musical ability, seem quite unconscious of self, and neither by tone nor act challenge the admiration of the beholder.

By the time the bobolink reaches the Potomac, in September, he has degenerated into a game-bird that is slaughtered by tens of thousands in the marshes. I think the prospects now are of his gradual extermination, as gunners and sportsmen are clearly on the increase, while the limit of the bird's productivity in the North has no doubt been reached long ago.

There are no more meadows to be added to his domain there, while he is being waylaid and cut off more and more on his return to the South.

It is gourmand eat gourmand, until in half a century more I expect the blithest and merriest of our meadow songsters will have disappeared before the rapacity of human throats.

But the poets have had a shot at him in good time, and have preserved some of his traits. Bryant's poem on this subject does not compare with his lines "To a Water-Fowl,"--a subject so well suited to the peculiar, simple, and deliberate motion of his mind; at the same time it is fit that the poet who sings of "The Planting of the Apple-Tree" should render into words the song of "Robert of Lincoln." I subjoin a few stanzas:--

ROBERT OF LINCOLN

Merrily swinging on brier and weed, Near to the nest of his little dame, Over the mountain-side or mead, Robert of Lincoln is telling his name: Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, Spink, spank, spink: Snug and safe is that nest of ours, Hidden among the summer flowers.

Chee, chee, chee.

Robert of Lincoln is gayly drest, Wearing a bright black wedding-coat, White are his shoulders and white his crest, Hear him call in his merry note: Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, Spink, spank, spink: Look what a nice new coat is mine, Sure there was never a bird so fine.

Chee, chee, chee.

Robert of Lincoln's Quaker wife, Pretty and quiet, with plain brown wings, Pa.s.sing at home a patient life, Broods in the gra.s.s while her husband sings.

Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, Spink, spank, spink: Brood, kind creature; you need not fear Thieves and robbers while I am here.

Chee, chee, chee.

But it has been reserved for a practical ornithologist, Mr. Wilson Flagg, to write by far the best poem on the bobolink that I have yet seen. It is much more in the mood and spirit of the actual song than Bryant's poem:--

THE O'LINCOLN FAMILY

A flock of merry singing-birds were sporting in the grove; Some were warbling cheerily, and some were making love: There were Bobolincon, Wadolincon, Winterseeble, Conquedle,-- A livelier set was never led by tabor, pipe, or fiddle,-- Crying, "Phew, shew, Wadolincon, see, see, Bobolincon, Down among the tickletops, hiding in the b.u.t.tercups!

I know the saucy chap, I see his shining cap Bobbing in the clover there--see, see, see!"

Up flies Bobolincon, perching on an apple-tree, Startled by his rival's song, quickened by his raillery.

Soon he spies the rogue afloat, curveting in the air, And merrily he turns about, and warns him to beware!

"'T is you that would a-wooing go, down among the rushes O!

But wait a week, till flowers are cheery,--wait a week,and, ere you marry, Be sure of a house wherein to tarry!

Wadolink, Whiskod.i.n.k, Tom Denny, wait, wait, wait!"

Every one's a funny fellow; every one's a little mellow; Follow, follow, follow, follow, o'er the hill and in the hollow!

Merrily, merrily, there they hie; now they rise and now they fly; They cross and turn, and in and out, and down in the middle, and wheel about,-- With a "Phew, shew, Wadolincon! listen to me, Bobolincon!-- Happy's the wooing that's speedily doing, that's speedily doing, That's merry and over with the bloom of the clover!

Bobolincon, Wadolincon, Winterseeble, follow, follow me!"

Many persons, I presume, have admired Wordsworth's poem on the cuckoo, without recognizing its truthfulness, or how thoroughly, in the main, the description applies to our own species. If the poem had been written in New England or New York, it could not have suited our case better:--

"O blithe New-comer! I have heard, I hear thee and rejoice, O Cuckoo! shall I call thee Bird, Or but a wandering Voice?

"While I am lying on the gra.s.s, Thy twofold shout I hear, From hill to hill it seems to pa.s.s, At once far off, and near.

"Though babbling only to the Vale, Of sunshine and of flowers, Thou bringest unto me a tale Of visionary hours.

"Thrice welcome, darling of the Spring!

Even yet thou art to me No bird, but an invisible thing, A voice, a mystery;

"The same whom in my schoolboy days I listened to; that Cry Which made me look a thousand ways In bush, and tree, and sky.

"To seek thee did I often rove Through woods and on the green; And thou wert still a hope, a love; Still longed for, never seen.

"And I can listen to thee yet; Can lie upon the plain And listen, till I do beget That golden time again.

"O blessed Bird! the earth we pace Again appears to be An unsubstantial, faery place; That is fit home for thee!"

Logan's stanzas, "To the Cuckoo," have less merit both as poetry and natural history, but they are older, and doubtless the latter poet benefited by them. Burke admired them so much that, while on a visit to Edinburgh, he sought the author out to compliment him:--

"Hail, beauteous stranger of the grove!

Thou messenger of spring!

Now Heaven repairs thy rural seat, And woods thy welcome sing.

"What time the daisy decks the green, Thy certain voice we hear; Hast thou a star to guide thy path, Or mark the rolling year?