232 BIRDS AND POETS 
London in March, 1876, eulogizing and defending 
the American bard, in his old age, illness, and 
poverty, from the swarms of maligners who still 
continue to assail him. ‘The appeal has this fine 
passage : — 
‘He who wanders through the solitudes of far-off 
Uist or lonely Donegal may often behold the Golden 
Eagle sick to death, worn with age or famine, or 
with both, passing with weary waft of wing from 
promontory to promontory, from peak to peak, pur- 
sued by a crowd of rooks and crows, which fall back 
screaming whenever the noble bird turns his indig- 
nant head, and which follow frantically once more, 
hooting behind him, whenever he wends again upon 
his way.” 
Skipping many things I would yet like to touch 
upon,—for this paper is already too long,—I will 
say in conclusion that, if any reader of mine is moved 
by what I have here written to undertake the peru- 
sal of ‘‘ Leaves of Grass,” or the later volume, “Two 
Rivulets,” let me yet warn him that he little sus- 
pects what is before him. Poetry in the Virgilian, 
Tennysonian, or Lowellian sense it certainly is not. 
Just as the living form of man in its ordinary garb 
is less beautiful (yet more beautiful) than the mar- 
ble statue; just as the hving woman and child that 
may have sat for the model is less beautiful (yet 
more so) than one of Raphael’s finest Madonnas, 
or just as a forest of trees addresses itself less di- 
rectly to the feeling of what is called art and form 
than the house or other edifice built from them : just 
