NATURE AND THE POETS. 105 



"Rue, cinque-foil, gill, vervain, and agrimony, 

 Blue-vetch, and trilliuin, hawk-weed, sassafras, 

 Milk-weeds and murky brakes, quaint pipes and sun-dew." 



Here is a characteristic touch : 



"A woodland walk, 



A quest of river-grapes, a mocking thrush, 

 A wild rose, a rock-loving columbine, 

 Salve my worst wounds." 



That " rock-loving columbine " is better than Bry- 

 ant's " columbines, in purple dressed," as our flower 

 is not purple, but yellow and scarlet. Yet Bryant 

 set the example to the poets that have succeeded 

 him, of closely studying Nature as she appears under 

 our own skies. 



I yield to none in my admiration of the sweet- 

 ness and simplicity of his poems of nature, and in 

 general of their correctness of observation. They 

 are tender and heartfelt, and they touch chords that 

 no other poet since Wordsworth has touched with 

 so firm a hand. Yet he was not always an infallible 

 observer ; he sometimes tripped upon his facts, and 

 at other times he deliberately moulded them, adding 

 to, or cutting off, to suit the purposes of his verse. 

 I will cite here two instances in which his natural 

 history is at fault. In his poem on the bobolink he 

 makes the parent birds feed their young with " seeds," 

 whereas, in fact, the young are fed exclusively upon 

 insects and worms. The bobolink is an insectivo- 

 rous bird in the North, or until its brood has flown, 

 and a granivorous bird in the South. 



