NATURE AND THE POETS 83 



accented. The voice of the thrushes (and our robin 

 and the European blackbird are thrushes) is flute- 

 like. Hence the aptness of this line of Tenny- 

 son: 



" The mellow ouzel fluted in the elm," 



the blackbird being the ouzel, or ouzel-cock, as 

 Shakespeare calls him. 



In the line which precedes this, Tennyson has 

 stamped the cuckoo : 



" To left and right, 

 The cuckoo told his name to all the hills." 



The cuckoo is a bird that figures largely in English 

 poetry, but he always has an equivocal look in 

 American verse, unless sharply discriminated. We 

 have a cuckoo, but he is a great recluse; and I am 

 sure the poets do not know when he comes or goes, 

 while to make him sing familiarly like the British 

 species, as I have known at least one of our poets to 

 do, is to come very wide of the mark. Our bird is 

 as solitary and joyless as the most veritable ancho- 

 rite. He contributes nothing to the melody or 

 gayety of the season. He is, indeed, known in some 

 sections as the " rain-crow ; " but I presume that not 

 one person in ten of those who spend their lives in 

 the country has ever seen or heard him. He is 

 like the showy orchis, or the ladies '-slipper, or the 

 shooting star among plants, a stranger to all but 

 the few; and when an American poet says cuckoo, 

 he must say it with such specifications as to leave 

 no doubt what cuckoo he means, as Lowell does in 

 his "Nightingale in the Study: " 



