232 BIRDS AND POETS 



London in March, 1876, eulogizing and defending 

 the American bard, in his old age, illness, and 

 poverty, from the swarms of maligners who still 

 continue to assail him. The appeal has this fine 

 passage : — 



"He who wanders through the solitudes of far-off 

 Uist or lonely Donegal may often behold the Golden 

 Eagle sick to death, worn with age or famine, or 

 with both, passing with weary waft of wing from 

 promontory to promontory, from peak to peak, pur- 

 sued by a crowd of rooks and crows, which fall back 

 screaming whenever the noble bird turns his indig- 

 nant head, and which follow frantically once more, 

 hooting behind him, whenever he wends again upon 

 his way." 



Skipping many things I would yet like to touch 

 upon, — for this paper is abeady too long, — I will 

 say in conclusion that, if any reader of mine is moved 

 by what I have here written to undertake the peru- 

 sal of "Leaves of Grass," or the later volume, "Two 

 Eivulets," let me yet warn him that he little sus- 

 pects what is before him. Poetry in the Virgilian, 

 Tennysonian, or Lowellian sense it certainly is not. 

 Just as the living form of man in its ordinary garb 

 is less beautiful (yet more beautiful) than the mar- 

 ble statue; just as the living woman and child that 

 may have sat for the model is less beautiful (yet 

 more so) than one of Eaphael's finest Madonnas, 

 or just as a forest of trees addresses itself less di- 

 rectly to the feeling of what is called art and form 

 than the house or other edifice built from them; just 



