Some My li^'lit .'i> a lauj,'h (»f ^k't', ^ ' 



Sonic Hy soft as a lon^, low sigh : 



All to the li.'ivfii where each would he — 



I'ly. — SwiNBiRNE. 



'J 



Our Skylark 



By Edward B. Clark 



The ICngli.sh Skylark is tryiii}^ to hcconie an American citizen. Possibly it 

 is too early yet to call it our skylark, but it is said that the bird has shown 

 that it can stand the American climate and that the few larks now with us are 

 likely to become the forefathers and foremothers of a long and tuneful line of 

 songsters. 



It is a sweet bird, this skylark, l^nglishmen who have come to our shores 

 to stay always have felt it a personal grievance that America had no skylark. 

 After the manner of John IjuH, the ICnglishman has seemed to feel that in 

 some way the American people were to blame for the absence of the lark from 

 the Yankee avifauna. Small blame to John for missing him. The bird is no 

 beauty. We have a thousand belter-dressed birds and a thousand as well be- 

 haved, but it is the characteristics of the skylark which ha\e made it dear to 

 the British heart. 



There is in this country a bird called the western pipit, locally known as 

 the Missouri skylark, whose hal)it and sign are similar to those of its British 

 brother. The wonder has been that no poet has been found in this middle western 

 country to sing its praise. I'erhaps the fault lies in the extreme local distribution 

 of the species. But, surely there be poets in the Missouri River country. 



Back almost as far as we can go in English poetry we find the lark. Lyly 

 wrote of the bird ; so did Shakespeare ; so did all the poets down to the very 

 moderns. Hogg said, "Sweet be thy matin o'er moorland and lea," and but 

 few more graceful lines have been written. Burroughs in his book touching 

 on birds and poets say plumply that he prefers Wordsworth's words on the 

 lark to those of Shelley. This may sound like rank heresy, but Burroughs is 

 never anything if not blunt. The "Ode to the Lark" is too long, he says, in 

 effect. The lark's song itself is long, to be sure, but "the lark can't help it and 

 Shelley could." 



Let others choose. Here are two of the better known extracts from two 

 great English i)oets. Wordsworth calls the skylark the pilgrim of the sky. He 

 says : 



Leave to the nightingale her shady wood ; 



A privacy of glorious light is thine. 

 Whence thou dost pour upon the world a flood 



Of harmony, with instinct more divine ; 

 Type of the wise who soar, but never roam. 

 True to the kindred points of heaven and home. 



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