PEPACTON 



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 the 

 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 lady's-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 : " 



"And, hark, the cuckoo, weatherwise, 

 Still hiding farther onward, wooes you." 



In like manner the primrose is an exotic in Amer- 

 ican poetry, to say nothing of the snowdrop and 

 the daisy. Its prominence in English poetry can 

 be understood when we remember that the plant 

 is so abundant in England as to be almost a weed, 

 and that it comes early and is very pretty. Cow- 

 slip and oxlip are familiar names of varieties of the 

 same plant, and they bear so close a resemblance 

 that it is hard to tell them apart. Hence Tennyson, 

 in " The Talking Oak: " 



"As cowslip unto oxlip is, 

 So seems she to the boy." 



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