NATURE AND THE POETS 81 



ingale for his native State ? Or of a Massachusetts 

 poet, who finds the snowdrop and the early primrose 

 blooming along his native streams, with the orchis 

 and the yellow violet, and makes the blackbird con- 

 spicuous among New England songsters ? Our ordi- 

 nary yew is not a tree at all, but a low spreading 

 evergreen shrub that one may step over; and as for 

 the nightingale, if they have the mockingbird in 

 Kansas, they can very well do without him. We 

 have several varieties of blackbirds, it is true; but 

 when an American poet speaks in a general way of 

 the blackbird piping or singing in a tree, as he 

 would speak of a robin or a sparrow, the suggestion 

 or reminiscence awakened is always that of the 

 blackbird of English poetry. 



" In days when daisies deck the ground, 

 And blackbirds whistle clear, 

 With honest joy our hearts will bound 

 To see the coming year " — 



sings Burns. I suspect that the English reader of 

 even some of Emerson's and Lowell's poems would 

 infer that our blackbird was identical with the Brit- 

 ish species. I refer to these lines of Emerson : — 



" Where arches green the livelong day 

 Echo the blackbirds' roundelay;" 



and to these lines from Lowell's "Rosaline: " — 



" A blackbird whistling overhead 

 Thrilled through my brain;" 



and again these from "The Fountain of Youth: " — 



" 'T is a woodland enchanted; 

 By no sadder spirit 

 Than blackbirds and thrushes 



