SIDE lylGHTS ON BIRDS 



It is always interesting to note the particular 

 species of wild creatures that, for one reason or 

 another, have attracted the attention of the poets. 

 Walt Whitman, by reason of his America^n setting, 

 speaks of many living things not met with in 

 England. Thus he marks the croaking of the 

 hylas, and the bellowing of the alligator in the 

 swamp : at dusk he hears the hermit thrush — 

 * ' the wondrous singer, the unrivalled one " — 

 warbling its reedy song among the swamp-cedars, 

 and at sunrise and sunset the clear musical call 

 of the brown-breasted robin. The hermit thrush 

 is the bird that the American ornithologist, 

 Burroughs, regarded as equalling the best of 

 English singers, adding : " To me its song is the 

 finest sound in Nature." The robin referred to 

 is the American migrant resembling in size and 

 hue our own hen blackbird, and save for a reddish 

 tinge on the breast, having little in common with 

 our familiar redbreast. The high-hole named 

 by Whitman as " flashing golden wings in lilac 

 time " is a woodpecker, deriving its name from 

 the lofty situation of its nest; and the phoebe- 

 bird is a flycatcher not unlike our spotted fly- 

 catcher, which wearies one in American wood- 

 lands by its peculiarly mournful drawling notes. 



Many poets touch upon animism — ^the living 

 spirit that lies behind the appearances of Nature 

 — with a guarded hand, fearing a recrudescence 

 of savagery and remembering that it is the stuff 

 of which m5rfchs are made. But Whitman casts 

 prudence to the winds. " I swear I think now," 

 he exclaims, ' ' that everything without exception 

 has an eternal soul. The trees have, rooted in 

 the ground : the weeds of the sea have : the 

 animals." In the death-chant that the venerable 

 redwood tree utters we can readily imagine that 

 the words were to Whitman no poetic fiction : — 



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