"Of all her train, the hands of Spring
First plant thee in the watery mould."
Now it is an interesting point which really is our first spring
flower. Which comes second or third is of less consequence, but
which everywhere and in all seasons comes first; and in such a case
the poet must not place the honor where it does not belong. I have
no hesitation in saying that, throughout the Middle and New England
States, the hepatica is the first spring flower. [Footnote:
excepting, of course, the skunk-cabbage.] It is some days ahead
of all others. The yellow violet belongs only to the more northern
sections,--to high, cold, beechen woods, where the poet rightly
places it; but in these localities, if you go to the spring woods
every day, you will gather the hepatica first. I have also found
the claytonia and the coltsfoot first. In a poem called "The
Twenty-Seventh of March," Bryant places both the hepatica and the
arbutus before it:--
"Within the woods
Tufts of ground-laurel, creeping
underneath
The leaves of the last summer, send
their sweets
Upon the chilly air, and by the oak,
The squirrel cups, a graceful
company,
Hide in their bells, a soft aerial
blue,"--
ground-laurel being a local name for trailing arbutus, called also
mayflower, and squirrel-cups for hepatica, or liver-leaf. But the
yellow violet may rightly dispute for the second place.
In "The Song of the Sower" our poet covers up part of the truth
with the grain. The point and moral of the song he puts in the
statement, that the wheat sown in the fall lies in the ground till
spring before it germinates; when, in fact, it sprouts and grows
and covers the ground with "emerald blades" in the fall:--
"Fling wide the generous grain; we fling
O'er the dark mould the green of
spring.
For thick the emerald blades shall
grow,
When first the March winds melt the
snow,
And to the sleeping flowers, below,
The early bluebirds sing.
. . . . . . . .
.
Brethren, the sower's task is done.
The seed is in its winter bed.
Now let the dark-brown mould be
spread,
To hide it from the sun,
And leave it to the kindly care
Of the still earth and brooding air,
As when the mother, from her
breast,
Lays the hushed babe apart to rest,
And shades its eyes and waits to see
How sweet its waking smile will be.
The tempest now may smite, the
sleet
All night on the drowned furrow beat,
And winds that, from the cloudy hold
Of winter, breathe the bitter cold,
Stiffen to stone the mellow mould,
Yet safe shall lie the wheat;
Till, out of heaven's unmeasured
blue,
Shall walk again the genial year,
To wake with warmth and nurse with
dew
The germs we lay to slumber here."
Of course the poet was not writing an agricultural essay, yet one
does not like to feel that he was obliged to ignore or sacrifice
any part of the truth to build up his verse. One likes to see him
keep within the fact without being conscious of it or hampered by
it, as he does in "The Planting of the Apple-Tree," or in the
"Lines to a Water-Fowl."
But there are glimpses of American scenery and climate in Bryant
that are unmistakable, as in these lines from "Midsummer:"--
"Look forth upon the earth--her
thousand plants
Are smitten; even the dark,
sun-loving maize
Faints in the field beneath the torrid
blaze;
The herd beside the shaded fountain
pants;
For life is driven from all the
landscape brown;
The bird has sought his tree, the
snake his den,
The trout floats dead in the hot
stream, and men
Drop by the sunstroke in the
populous town."
Here is a touch of our "heated term" when the dogstar is abroad and
the weather runs mad. I regret the "trout floating dead in the hot
stream," because, if such a thing ever has occurred, it is entirely
exceptional. The trout in such weather seek the deep water and the
spring holes, and hide beneath rocks and willow banks. The
following lines would be impossible in an English poem:--
"The snowbird twittered on the
beechen bough,
And 'neath the hemlock, whose thick
branches bent
Beneath its bright, cold burden, and
kept dry
A circle, on the earth, of withered
leaves,
The partridge found a shelter."
Both Bryant and Longfellow put their spring bluebird in the elm,
which is a much better place for the oriole,--the elm-loving
oriole. The bluebird prefers a humbler perch. Lowell puts him
upon a post in the fence, which is a characteristic attitude:--
"The bluebird, shifting his light load of
song,
From post to post along the cheerless
fence."
Emerson calls him "April's bird," and makes him "fly before from
tree to tree," which is also good. But the bluebird is not
strictly a songster in the sense in which the song sparrow or the
indigo-bird, or the English robin redbreast, is; nor do Bryant's
lines hit the mark:--
"The bluebird chants, from the elm's
long branches,
A hymn to welcome the budding
year."
Lowell, again, is nearer the truth when he speaks of his "whiff of
song." All his notes are call-notes, and are addressed directly to
his mate. The songbirds take up a position and lift up their
voices and sing. It is a deliberate musical performance, as much
so as that of Nilsson or Patti. The bluebird, however, never
strikes an attitude and sings for the mere song's sake. But the
poets are perhaps to be allowed this latitude, only their pages
lose rather than gain by it. Nothing is so welcome in this field
as characteristic touches, a word or a phrase that fits this case
and no other. If the bluebird chants a hymn, what does the wood
thrush do? Yet the bluebird's note is more pleasing than most bird-
songs; if it could be reproduced in color, it would be the hue of
the purest sky.