A BIRD ANTHOLOGY FROM LOWELL. 253 
** For with a lark’s heart he doth tower, 
By a glorious upward instinct drawn ; 
No bee nestles deeper in the flower 
Than he in the bursting rose of dawn.” 
It almost throws one into ‘a midsummer night’s 
dream ”’ to read this picturesque line, — 
“ The clouds like swans drift down the streaming atmosphere.” 
That must have been an expressive face indeed 
whose features were 
* As full of motion as a nest 
That palpitates with unfledged birds,” 
albeit one may be permitted to hope, without irrev- 
erence, that it made a more attractive picture than 
did the callow youngsters gaping and wabbling in 
their nursery. But here is a delineation of bird 
life so graphically and richly colored that one longs 
for the brush of the artist to transfer it to canvas. 
Listen! listen! There is an exhilarant in the 
atmosphere. 
“ The little bird sits at his door in the sun, 
Atilt like a blossom among the leaves, 
And lets his illumined being o’errun 
With the deluge of summer it receives ; 
His mate feels the eggs beneath her wings, 
And the heart in her dumb breast flutters and sings ; 
He sings to the wide world, and she to her nest, — 
In the nice ear of Nature which song is the best?” 
The last two lines, by the way, are in perfect keep- 
ing with Mr. Lowell’s generous instincts, which were 
always on the side of the lowly and unappreciated. 
