7 HEA TMENT OF NA TURE B Y AMERICAN AND ENGLISH POETS. 603 



ropean congener, to the fancies and mythology of antiquity. In the next, the 

 beasts and birds of the New World are not the same beasts and birds that play 

 such important parts in Old- World fables, give point to Old-World proverbs, and 

 form the object of so many Old-World prejudices and predilections, and the 

 American poet therefore finds his creatui-es as yet untampered with by antique 

 misrepresentation or popular superstitions. He has not got to rummage for his 

 natural history among the -mossy roots of a reverend folk lore, or a heraldry that is 

 sanctified by national associations. The larks, robins, and magpies of America are 

 not the birds that are known by the same names in Europe, and so the poet of 

 the West finds the ground still virgin soil before him. Popular superstition has 

 not had time yet to lichen over the familiar objects of his country-side, and he 

 has thus few temptations to the logicians' fallacy from antiquity. Indeed, there is 

 even noticeable sometimes a tendency toward irreverence for "the widowed" 

 turtle, and a disposition to make fun of the nightingale that " bruised his bosom 

 on a thorn," as if they were antiquated favorites of an obsolete era of thought, 

 " Though still the lark- voiced matins ring 



The world has known so long, 

 The wood-thrush of the West still sing 



Earth's last sweet even song! " 

 But this, after all, is only a very partial protection, for though some of his 

 beasts, birds, fishes, and insects are new to poetry, the remainder — such as the 

 wolf and the lion, the owl and the raven — are not things of any one time or place. 

 Thus an American raven flies with just as " prodigious " a flight as a Scotch one 

 or a Roman; the owl and vulture might be quite as " obscene " in "Evangeline" 

 or " Mogg Megone " as they are in Wordsworth or Cowper. But I do not find 

 Longfellow or any of his fellow-countrymen taking advantage of the license of 

 poetical prejudice extended to them by high prescription. On the contrary, they 

 compassionate the raven, and handsomely meet the vulture and the owl with a com- 

 pliment. They speak ill of nothing. And I can not, for myself, help admiring 

 this absence of cynicism. They are as gentle always as Keats, while in their 

 more general passages they show all Shelley's appreciation of the harmonious 



unity in nature : 



" Come, learn with me the fatal song 



W^hich knits the world in music strong, 



Whereto every bosom dances, 



Kmdled with courageous fancies ; 



Come lift thine eyes to lofty rhymes, 



Of things with things and times with times, 



Primal chimes of sun and shade. 



Of sound and echo, man and maid, 



The land reflected in the flood, 



Body with shadow still pursued. 



For Nature beats in perfect tune, 



And rounds with rhyme her every rune ! " 



