A BIRD ANTHOLOGY PROM LOWELL. 249 



" 'T is a woodland enchanted 1 

 By no sadder spirit 

 Than blackbirds and thrushes, 

 That whistle to cheer it 

 All day in the bushes, 

 This woodland is haunted." 



And what a picture for the fancy is limned in the 

 following lines : — 



" Like rainbow-feathered birds that bloom 

 A moment on some autumn bough, 

 That, with the spurn of their farewell, 

 Sheds its last leaves I " 



A flashlight view that, of one of the rarest scenes 

 in Nature. The poet must have bent over more 

 than one callow brood of nestlings, or he never 

 could have written so knowingly about them, — 



" Blind nestlings, unafraid. 

 Stretch up wide-mouthed to every shade 

 By which their downy dream is stirred. 

 Taking it for the mother bird ; '' 



for such is the unsuspicious habit of most bantlings 

 in the nest. It would be difficult to find a defter 

 touch than that with which Lowell describes a 

 resplendent morning, "omnipotent with sunshine," 

 whose " quick charm . . . wiled the bluebird to his 



whiff of song," 



"While aloof 

 An oriole clattered and a robin shrilled, 

 Denouncing me an alien and a thief ; " 



particularly if it is borne in mind that the allusion is 

 to the chattering alarm-call of the oriole and the 

 robin. Exquisite indeed is the description of — 



