ii6 Bird -Lore 



music and rhythm! How intimately he sensed the world about him! He 



wrote, 



"I am not overbold. 

 I hold 



Full powers from Nature manifold. 

 I speak for each no-tongued tree 

 That, spring by spring, doth nobler be, 

 And dumbly and most wistfully 

 His mighty prayerful arms outspreads 

 Above men's oft-unheeding heads, 

 And^his big blessing downward sheds. 

 I speak for all-shaped blooms and leaves, 

 Lichens on stones and moss on eaves. 

 Grasses and grains in ranks and sheaves; 

 Broad-fronded ferns and keen-leaved canes, 

 And briery mazes bounding lanes, 

 And marsh-plants, thirsty-cupped for rains. 

 And milky stems and sugary veins; 



'All purities of shady springs. 

 All shynesses of film- winged things 

 That fly from tree- trunks and bark- rings; 

 All modesties of mountain-fawns. 

 That leap to covert from wild lawns, 

 And tremble if the day but dawns; 

 All sparklings of small beady eyes 

 Of birds, and sidelong glances wise 

 Wherewith the jay hints tragedies; 

 All piquancies of prickly burs, 

 And smoothnesses of downs and furs 

 Of eiders and of minevers; 

 All limpid honeys that do lie 

 At stamen-bases, nor deny 

 The hummingbirds' fine roguery, 

 Bee- thighs, nor any butterfly; 

 All gracious curves of slender wings, 

 Bark-mottlings, fiber-spiralings, 

 Fern-wavings and leaf-flickerings; 

 Each dial-marked leaf and flower-bell. 

 Wherewith in every lonesome dell 

 Time to himself his hours doth tell; 

 All tree-sounds, rustlings of pine-cones, 

 Wind-sighings, doves' melodious moans. 

 And night's unearthly under-tones; 

 All placid lakes and waveless deeps, 

 All cool reposing mountain-steeps. 

 Vale-calms and tranquil lotos-sleeps; — 

 Yea, all fair forms, and sounds, and lights, 

 And warmths, and mysteries, and nights, 

 Of Nature's utmost depths and heights, 

 —These doth my timid tongue present, 



