A BIRD ANTHOLOGY FROM LOWELL. 243 
XVIII. 
Beep iety AN PaIOLOGY vrROM EOW EEE 
N making a study of Lowell’s poetry for a special 
purpose, one cannot help admiring the genius 
with which he transmutes every theme he touches 
into gold. His Muse is exceedingly versatile, ranging 
at her own sweet will over a wide and varied field. 
There may be times when you are not in the mood 
for smiling at his humor or weeping at his pathos; 
but his delineations of Nature are always so true, 
so musical, so picturesque, that they seldom fail to 
strike a responsive chord in the breasts of those 
readers who are not 
“Aliens among the birds and brooks, 
Dull to interpret or conceive 
What gospels lost the woods retrieve.” 
No other American poet seems to get quite so 
near to Nature’s throbbing heart. Dream though 
he sometimes may, he seldom loses his hold on the 
world of reality. Nature in her own garb is beauti- 
1 This article, under the title of “ Lowell and the Birds,” 
was first published in the ‘‘New England Magazine,” for 
November, 1891, shortly after the poet’s death. Copyright 
credit is here given to the publisher of that magazine. 
