Part II: STUDY NOTES 



LITERATURE 



r 1 1HE natural history of the fields is usually as 

 A welcome to the poet as to the field natural- 

 ist, even though he does not put it into his song. It 

 was certainly welcome to Emerson, and his poems 

 abound in allusions to the life of the fields, both 

 floral and faunal. But the poet is not out in quest 

 of natural-history facts; he is in quest of any facts 

 he can make into poetry. "A little more than a 

 little" of these things would burden his lyric. He 

 is intent upon the play of his own fancy and feel- 

 ings over the larger and more general aspects of the 

 landscape. Emerson went to the woods, not to 

 bring home bird or botany lore, but to fetch the 

 word of the wood-god to men. When he brought the 

 asters back with him, each came "laden with a 

 thought," but when he brought back the poems of the 

 "Humble-Bee" and "The Titmouse," he brought 

 back, in each case, a bit of sound natural history, 

 animated and expanded with genuine poetic emo- 

 tion. His "May-Day" is rife with close observation 

 of nature at this season, but it is not burdened with 

 the details. 

 The poet uses the facts of natural history and of 



