A BIRD ANTHOLOGY FROM LOWELL. 247 
orchestra, as he does at more than one place in 
“The Vision of Sir Launfal,” — 
“ The little birds sang as if it were 
The one day of summer in all the year, 
And the very leaves seemed to sing on the trees.” 
What bird lover has not often been caught in 
such a mesh of bird song, on a bright day of the 
early springtime? Even good-natured Hosea Big- 
low cannot always repress his enthusiasm for the 
birds, although he is quite too chary of his allusions 
to them, — that is, too chary for the man who has 
birds on the brain. His unsophisticated sincerity 
cannot brook a perfunctory treatment of Nature’s 
blithe minstrels, for he breaks out scornfully in 
denouncing those book-read poets who get “ wut 
they ’ve airly read’”’ so “worked into their heart 
an’ head’’ that they 
“. . . can’t seem to write but jest on sheers 
With furrin countries or played-out ideers. 
This makes ’em talk o’ daisies, larks, an’ things, 
Ez though we’d nothin’ here that blows an’ sings. 
Why, I’d give more for one live bobolink 
Than a square mile o’ larks in printer’s ink!” 
Hosea, in spite of the meagreness of his allusions 
to bird life, still proves beyond a doubt that he is 
conversant with the migratory habits of the birds, 
and that he has been watching a little impatiently 
for their vernal appearance in his native fields and 
woods, as every bird student who reads the following 
lines will testify, — 
