BIEDS AND POETS 31 



Where never bluebird's plume intrudes. 

 Quick darting through the dewy moi'U, 

 The redstart trilled his twittering horn 

 And vanished in thick boughs ; at even, 

 Like liquid pearls fresh showered from heaven, 

 The high notes of the lone wood thrush 

 Fell on the forest's holy hush ; 

 But thou all day complainest here, — 



'Pe-wee! pe-wee! peer!'" 



Emerson's best natural history poem is the "Hum- 

 ble-bee," — a poem as good in its way as Burns's 

 poem on the mouse; but his later poem, "The Tit- 

 mouse," has many of the same qualities, and cannot 

 fail to be acceptable to both poet and naturalist. 



The chickadee is indeed a truly Emersonian bird, 

 and the poet shows him to be both a hero and a 

 philosopher. Hardy, active, social, a winter bird 

 no less than a summer, a defler of both frost and 

 heat, lover of the pine-tree, and dUigent searcher 

 after truth in the shape of eggs and larvae of insects, 

 preeminently a New England bird, clad in black and 

 ashen gray, with a note the most cheering and reas- 

 suring to be heard in our January woods, — I know 

 of none other of our birds so well calculated to cap- 

 tivate the Emersonian muse. 



Emerson himself is a northern hyperborean genius, 

 — a winter bird with a clear, saucy, cheery call, 

 and not a passionate summer songster. His lines 

 have little melody to the ear, but they have the vigor 

 and distinctness of all pure and compact things. 

 They are like the needles of the pine — "the snow 

 loving pine " — more than the emotional foliage of 

 the deciduous trees, and the titmouse becomes them 

 well : — 



