"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."
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
"The swamp, where hums the dropping snipe."
His single bird-poem, aside from the song I have quoted, is "The
Blackbird," the Old World prototype 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 plumage is its
beak, which is as yellow as a kernel of Indian corn. The following are
the two middle stanzas of the poem:--
"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.
"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 blackbird as the
ouzel-cock; indeed, he puts quite a flock of birds in this song:--
"The ouzel-cock so black of hue,
With orange tawny bill;
The throstle with his note so true,
The wren with little quill;
The finch, the sparrow, and the lark,
The plain song cuckoo gray,
Whose note full many a man doth mark,
And dares not answer nay."
So far as external appearances are concerned,--form, plumage, grace of
manner,--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, sitting 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, bristling 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 wild Irishman of them all
is the great crested flycatcher, a large, leather-colored or
sandy-complexioned bird that prowls through the woods, uttering its
harsh, uncanny note and waging fierce warfare upon its fellows. The
exquisite of the family, and the braggart of the orchard, is the
kingbird, a bully that loves to strip the feathers off its more timid
neighbors such as the bluebird, 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, notwithstanding 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
careful study of the bird and its haunts, and is good poetry as well as
good ornithology:--
"The listening Dryads hushed the woods;
The boughs were thick, and thin and few
The golden ribbons fluttering through;
Their sun-embroidered, leafy hoods
The 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,
So melancholy and so sweet,
The dim-eyed violets yearned with pain.
'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,--
'Pe-wee! pe-wee! peer!'
"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 spellbound all the day
That low, entrancing note to hear,--
'Pe-wee! pe-wee! peer!'
"I quit the search, and sat me down
Beside the brook, irresolute,
And watched a little bird in suit
Of sober 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,--
'Pe-wee! pe-wee! peer!'
"For so I found my forest bird,--
The pewee of the loneliest woods,
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 "Humble-Bee,"--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 philosopher. 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 Emersonian muse.
Emerson himself is a northern hyperborean genius,--a winter bird with
a clear, saucy, cheery call, and not a passionate summer songster.
His lines have little melody to the ear, but they have the vigor and
distinctness of all pure and compact things. They 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,
'T was 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 hands
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.
"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!
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,
To ape thy dare-devil array?
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 here
To find the antidote of fear,
Now hear thee say in Roman key,
_Poean! Veni, vidi, vici."_
A late bird-poem, and a good one of its kind, is Celia Thaxter's
"Sandpiper," which recalls Bryant's "Water-Fowl" in its successful
rendering of the spirit and atmosphere of the scene, and the
distinctness with 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,
awaken quite a different train of emotions from those awakened by
the land-birds. They all have clinging to them some reminiscence 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, one of the most
interesting of the family, 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 it running or flitting before him,
following up the breakers and picking up the aquatic insects left on the
sands; and the trout-fisher along the farthest inland stream likewise
intrudes upon its privacy. Flitting along from stone 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 skimming
up or down the stream on its long, convex wings, uttering its shrill
cry, the sandpiper is not a bird of the sea merely; and Mrs. Thaxter's
poem is as much for the dweller inland as for the dweller upon the
coast:--