A BIRD ANTHOLOGY FROM LOWELL. 261 
“¢ A bird is singing in my brain, 
And bubbling o’er with mingled fancies, 
Gay, tragic, rapt, right heart of Spain 
Fed with the sap of old romances ;’” 
and so for once the poet of the birds cannot be lured 
from his study, where he has been caught in the weft 
of old Moorish and Castilian legends, and he con- 
cludes his apology with the only slighting allusion 
in all his verses, so far as I have discovered, to his 
beloved winged minstrels : — 
“« Bird of to-day, thy songs are stale 
To his, my singer of all weathers, 
My Calderon, my nightingale, 
My Arab soul in Spanish feathers. 
“« Ah, friend, these singers dead so long, 
And still, God knows, in purgatory, 
Give its best sweetness to all song, 
To Nature’s self her better glory.’ ” 
Thus the Lowell antholegy has swollen to a veri- 
table anthem, and gives to this modest volume a 
peroration that it can never hope to deserve. 
