A BIRD ANTHOLOGY PROM LOWELL. 261 



" ' A bird is singing in my brain. 



And bubbling o'er with mingled fancies. 

 Gay, tragic, rapt, right heart of Spain 

 Fed with the sap of old romances ; ' " 



and so for once the poet of the birds cannot be lured 

 from his study, where he has been caught in the weft 

 of old Moorish and Castilian legends, and he con- 

 cludes his apology with the only slighting allusion 

 in all his verses, so far as I have discovered, to his 

 beloved winged minstrels : — 



" ' Bird of to-day, thy songs are stale 

 To his, my singer of all weathers, 

 My Calderon, my nightingale. 



My Arab soul in Spanish feathers. 



" ' Ah, friend, these singers dead so long, 

 And still, God knows, in purgatory. 

 Give its best sweetness to all song. 

 To Nature's self her better glory.' " 



Thus the Lowell anthology has swollen to a veri- 

 table anthem, and gives to this modest volume a 

 peroration that it can never hope to deserve. 



