112 BIRDS AND POETS 



But the difference I would indicate may exist be- 

 tween poets of the same or nearly the same magni- 

 tude. Thus, in this light Tennyson is an autumnal 

 poet, mellow and dead-ripe, and was so from the 

 first; while Wordsworth has much more of the 

 spring in him, is nearer the bone of things and to 

 primitive conditions. 



Among the old poems, one which seems to me to 

 have much of the charm of springtime upon it is 

 the story of Cupid and Psyche in Apuleius. The 

 songs, gambols, and wooings of the early birds are 

 not more welcome and suggestive. How graceful 

 and airy, and yet what a tender, profound, human 

 significance it contains ! But the great vernal poem, 

 doubly so in that it is the expression of the spring- 

 time of the race, the boyhood of man as well, is the 

 Iliad of Homer. What faith, what simple wonder, 

 what unconscious strength, what beautiful savagery, 

 what magnanimous enmity, — a very paradise of 

 war! 



Though so young a people, there is not much 

 of the feeling of spring in any of our books. The 

 muse of our poets is wise rather than joyous. There 

 is no excess or extravagance or unruliness in her. 

 There are spring sounds and tokens in Emerson's 

 " May- Day:" — 



" April cold witli dropping rain 

 Willows and lilacs brings again, 

 The whistle of returning birds, 

 And trumpet-lowing of the herds. 

 The scarlet maple-keys betray 

 What potent blood hath modest May, 



