THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE 211 
why, that is an accident that bars them in a measure 
to us, but not to the future. 
Very frequently in these lists or enumerations of 
objects, actions, shows, etc., there are sure to occur 
lines of perfect description : — 
“Where the heifers browse — where geese nip their food with 
short jerks; 
Where sun-down shadows lengthen over the limitless and 
lonesome prairie; 
Where herds of buffalo make a crawling spread of the square 
miles far and near; 
Where the splash of swimmers and divers cools the warm noon; 
Where the katydid works her chromatic reed on the walnut- 
tree over the well.”’ 
“ Spar-makers in the spar-yard, the swarming row of well-grown 
apprentices, 
The swing of their axes on the square-hew’d log, shaping it 
toward the shape of a mast, 
The brisk short crackle of the steel driven slantingly into the 
pine, 
The butter-color’d chips flying off in great flakes and slivers, 
The limber motion of brawny young arms and hips in easy 
costumes.’’ 
* Always these compact lands—lands tied at the hips with the 
belt stringing the huge oval lakes.”’ 
“Far breath’d land! Arctic braced! Mexican breez’d!—the di- 
verse! the compact! ”’ 
Tried by the standards of the perfect statuesque 
poems, these pages will indeed seem strange enough ; 
but viewed as a part of the poetic compend of 
America, the swift gathering-in, from her wide- 
spreading, multitudinous, material life, of traits and 
points and suggestions that belong here and are 
characteristic, they have their value. The poet casts 
his great seine into events and doings and material 
