A BIRD ANTHOLOGY FROM LOWELL. 249 
“’T is a woodland enchanted ! 
By no sadder spirit 
Than blackbirds and thrushes, 
That whistle to cheer it 
All day in the bushes, 
This woodland is haunted.” 
And what a picture for the fancy is limned in the 
following lines : — 
“ Like rainbow-feathered birds that bloom 
A moment on some autumn bough, 
That, with the spurn of their farewell, 
Sheds its last leaves!” 
A flashlight view that, of one of the rarest scenes 
in Nature. The poet must have bent over more 
than one callow brood of nestlings, or he never 
could have written so knowingly about them, — 
“ Blind nestlings, unafraid, 
Stretch up wide-mouthed to every shade 
By which their downy dream is stirred, 
Taking it for the mother bird;” 
for such is the unsuspicious habit of most bantlings 
in the nest. It would be difficult to find a defter 
touch than that with which Lowell describes a 
resplendent morning, “ omnipotent with sunshine,” 
whose “ quick charm . . . wiled the bluebird to his 
whiff of song,” 
“ While aloof 
An oriole clattered and a robin shrilled, 
Denouncing me an alien and a thief; ” 
particularly if it is borne in mind that the allusion is 
to the chattering alarm-call of the oriole and the 
robin. Exquisite indeed is the description of — 
