Who's whistling so cheerfully down in the clover,
When the meadows are wet with the sweet morning dew?
He's piping and calling, this ardent young lover,
And telling his tale the whole morning through,
What is it he says in the early sunlight?
"Bob White! Bob White!
Bob--Bob White!"
At noon, when the day god in wrath has descended,
With his swift golden arrows, on grain-field and hill;
And the birds of the morning their love songs have ended,
Then deep in the wood, and down by the rill
I hear a shrill whistle, so cheerful and bright:
"Wheat ripe? Bob White!
Not--not quite!"
When shadows of evening are lengthening slowly,
Ere the night dews lie damp on the meadows again;
As light breezes sweep o'er the soft grass so lowly,
What is it he says? I hear the refrain,
While in the thick verdure he's hid from my sight:
"Good night! Bob White!
Good--good night."
Effie L. Hallett.
* * * * *
It might almost be said that the birds are all birds 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 and the singleness of purpose, the enthusiasm, the
unworldliness, the love, that characterize the true and divine race of
bards.
The very idea of a bird is a symbol and a suggestion 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 beautiful vagabonds, endowed
with every grace, masters of all chimes, 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!
John Burroughs
in "Birds and Poets."
[Illustration: RAINBOW TROUT.
(_Salmo irideus_.)
COPYRIGHT 1900, BY
A. W. MUMFORD, CHICAGO.]