naked, blind, and so feeble as scarcely to be able to raise their little bills to receive food from their parents, and could you see those parents full of anxiety and fear, passing and repassing within a few inches of your face, alighting on a twig not more than a yard from you, and waiting the result of your unwelcome visit in a state of despair you could not fail to be interested in such a display of parental affection. Then how pleasing it is, on leaving the spot, to see the returning joy of the parents, when, after examining the nest, they find their nurslings untouched! AUDUBON. Adapted. 77.- THE NIGHTINGALE AND THE a-ban-don', abandonment, a giving | palm [pahm], guerdon, symbol of O nightingale! that on yon bloomy spray Warblest at eve, when all the woods are still. - MILTON. 1. 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 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. 2. So had Wilson, though perhaps not in so large a measure. Yet he took fire as only a poet can. While making a journey on foot to Philadelphia, shortly after landing in this country, he caught sight of the red-headed woodpecker flitting among the trees, a bird that shows like a tri-colored scarf among the foliage, and it so kindled his enthusiasm that his life was devoted to the pursuit of the birds from that day. 3. 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 climes, 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! Indeed, is not the bird the original type and teacher of the poet? and do we not demand of the human lark or thrush that he "shake out his carols" in the same free and spontaneous manner as his winged prototype ? 4. The nightingale is the most general favorite, and nearly all the more noted English poets have sung her praises. To the melancholy poet she is melancholy, and to the cheerful she is cheerful. Shakespeare in one of his sonnets speaks of her song as mournful, while Martial calls her the "most garrulous" of birds. Milton sang: To Wordsworth she told another story: 66 "O nightingale! thou surely art A creature of ebullient heart; These notes of thine - they pierce and pierce; Thou sing'st as if the god of wine Of shades, and dews, and silent night, In a like vein Coleridge sang: 66 ""T is the merry nightingale That crowds and hurries and precipitates With fast, thick warble his delicious notes." 5. Keats's poem on the nightingale is doubtless more in the spirit of the bird's strain than any other. It is less a description of the song, and more the song itself. Hood called the nightingale "The sweet and plaintive Sappho of the dell." I mention the nightingale only to point my remarks upon its American rival, the famous mocking-bird of the Southern States, which is also a nightingale, a nightsinger, and which no doubt excels the Old World bird in the variety and compass of its powers. 6. Our nightingale has mainly the reputation of the caged bird, and is famed mostly for its powers of mimicry, which are truly wonderful, enabling the bird to exactly reproduce and even improve upon the notes of almost any other songster. But in a state of freedom it has a song of its own which is infinitely rich and various. It is a garrulous polyglot when it chooses to be, and there is a dash of the clown and the buffoon in its nature which too often flavors its whole performance, especially in captivity. 7. In Alabama and Florida its song may be heard all through the sultry summer night, at times low and plaintive, then full and strong. A friend of Thoreau, and a careful observer, who has resided in Florida, tells me that this bird is a much more marvelous singer than it has the credit of being. He describes a habit it has of singing on the wing on moonlight nights that would be worth going south to hear. Starting from a low bush, it mounts in the air, and continues its flight apparently to an altitude of several hundred feet, remaining on the wing a number of minutes, and pouring out its song with the utmost clearness and abandon, -a slowly rising musical rocket that fills the night air with harmonious sounds. Here are both the lark and nightingale in one. 8. The southern poet, Wilde, has celebrated this bird in the following admirable sonnet: Winged mimic of the woods! thou motley fool, Thine ever-ready notes of ridicule Pursue thy fellows still with jest and jibe. Wit-sophist songster - Yorick of thy tribe, Thou sportive satirist of Nature's school, Thou pour'st a soft, sweet, pensive, solemn strain, JNO. BURROUGHS. 78. THE LUTIST AND THE NIGHTINGALE. To Thessaly I came, and living private, Without acquaintance of more sweet companions A sound of music touched mine ears, or rather, A youth, a fair-faced youth, upon his lute, A nightingale, Nature's best skilled musician, undertakes3 The challenge; and for every several strain The well-shaped youth could touch, she sang him down. 1 en-count'ered, befel. 2 chor'is-ters, chorus-singers. 3 un-der-takes', assumes, accepts. |