How Animals Talk 



the natural way of a fox, which makes a devious 

 trail because so many different odors attract him 

 here or there. 



In fine, to watch any free wild creature is to 

 understand the singing lines from "Saul": 



How good is man's life, the mere living, how fit to employ 

 All the heart and the soul and the senses forever in joy! 



It is to understand also the spirit of Browning, 

 who is hardly a world poet, to be sure, but who 

 has the distinction of being the only famous poet 

 who is always alive and awake. Homer nods; 

 Dante despairs and mourns; Shakespeare has a 

 long period of gloom when he can write only ter- 

 rible tragedies of human failure; other great poets 

 have their weary days or melancholy hours, but 

 Browning sings ever a song of abounding life. 

 Even his last, the Epilogue to "Asolando," is not 

 a swan-song, like Tennyson's ; it is rather a bugle- 

 call, and it sounds not the "taps" of earth, but the 

 "reveille" of immortality. But we are wandering 

 from our woodsy trail. 



Those who make an ornithology of mere feath- 

 ers, or who imagine they know an animal because 

 they know what the scientists have said about 

 him, see in this instant responsiveness of the wild 

 creature only a manifestation of fear, and almost 

 every book of birds or beasts repeats the story 



[38] 



