Bird-Themed Poetry From the Atlantic Monthly in the 1860s
The Titmouse.
- You shall not be over-bold
- When you deal with arctic cold,
- As late I found my lukewarm blood
- Chilled wading in the snow-choked wood
- How should I fight? my foeman fine
- Has million arms to one of mine
- East, west, for aid I looked in vain;
- East, west, north, south, are his domain.
- Miles off, three dangerous miles, is home;
- Must borrow his winds who there would come.
- Up and away for life! be fleet!
- The frost-king times my fumbling feet,
- Sings in my ears, my hands are stones,
- Curdles the blood to the marble bones,
- Tugs at the heartstrings, numbs the sense,
- Hems in the life with narrowing fence.
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- Well in this broad bed lie and sleep,
- The punctual stars will vigil keep,
- Embalmed by purifying cold,
- The winds shall sing their dead-march old,
- The snow is no ignoble shroud,
- The moon thy mourner, and the cloud.
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- Softly, but this way fate was pointing,
- 'T was coming fast to such anointing,
- When piped a tiny voice hard by,
- Gay and polite, a cheerful cry,
- "Chic-chic-a-dee-dee!" saucy note,
- Out of sound heart and merry throat,
- As if it said, "Good day, good Sir!
- Fine afternoon, old passenger!
- Happy to meet you in these places,
- Where January brings few men's faces."
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- This poet, though he lives apart,
- Moved by a hospitable heart,
- Sped, when I passed his sylvan fort,
- To do the honors of his court,
- As fits a feathered lord of land,
- Flew near, with soft wing grazed my hand,
- Hopped on the bough, then, darting low,
- Prints his small impress on the snow,
- Shows feats of his gymnastic play,
- Head downward, clinging to the spray,
- Here was this atom in full breath.
-
- This scrap of valor just for play
- Fronts the north-wind in waistcoat gray,
- As if to shame my weak behavior.
- I greeted loud my little savior;
- "Thou pet! what dost here? and what for?
- In these woods, thy small Labrador,
- At this pinch, wee San Salvador!
- What fire burns in that little chest,
- So frolic, stout, and self-possest?
- Didst steal the glow that lights the West?
- Henceforth I wear no stripe but thine:
- Ashes and black all hues outshine.
- Why are not diamonds black and gray,
- To ape thy dare-devil array?
- And I affirm the spacious North
- Exists to draw thy virtue forth.
- I think no virtue goes with size:
- The reasons of all cowardice
- Is, that men are overgrown,
- And, to be valiant, must come down
- To the titmouse dimension."
-
- 'T is good-will makes intelligence,
- And I began to catch the sense
- Of my bird's song: "Live out of doors,
- In the great woods, and prairie floors.
- I dine in the sun; when he sinks in the sea,
- I, too, have a hole in a hollow tree.
- And I like less when summer beats
- With stifling beams on these retreats
- Than noontide twilights which snow makes
- With tempest of the blinding flakes:
- For well the soul, if stout within,
- Can arm impregnably the skin;
- And polar frost my frame defied,
- Made of the air that blows outside."
-
- With glad remembrance of my debt,
- I homeward turn. Farewell, my pet!
- When here again they pilgrim comes,
- He shall bring store of weeds and crumbs.
- Henceforth I prize thy wiry chant
- O'er all that mass and minister vaunt:
- For men mishear thy call in spring,
- As 't would accost some frivolous wing,
- Crying out of the hazel copse, "Phe-be!"
- And in winter, "Chic-a-dee-dee!"
- I think old Caesar must have heard
- In Northern Gaul my dauntless bird,
- And, echoed in some frosty wold,
- Borrowed the battle-numbers bold.
- And thank thee for a better clew:
- I, who dreamed not, when I came here,
- To find the antidote of fear,
- Now hear thee say in Roman key,
- "Paean! Ve-ni, Vi-di, Vi-ci."
Anonymous. May, 1862. Atlantic Monthly 9(55): 585-587.
The Bobolinks
- When Nature had made all her birds,
- And had no cares to think on,
- She gave a rippling laugh and out
- There flew a Bobolinkon.
-
- She laughed again, out flew a mate.
- A breeze of Eden bore them
- Across the fields of Paradise,
- The sunrise reddening o'er them.
-
- Incarnate sport and holiday,
- They flew and sang forever;
- Their souls through June were all in tune,
- Their wings were weary never.
-
- The blithest song of breezy farms,
- Quaintest of field-notes flavors,
- Exhaustless fount of trembling trills
- And demisemiquavers.
-
- Their tribe, still drunk with air and light
- And perfume of the meadow,
- Go reeling up and down the sky,
- In sunshine and in shadow.
-
- One springs from out the dew-wet grass,
- Another follows after;
- The morn is thrilling with their songs
- And peals of fairy laughter.
-
- From out the marshes and the brook,
- They set the tall reeds swinging,
- And meet and frolic in the air,
- Half prattling and half singing.
-
- When morning winds sweep meadow lands
- In green and russet billows,
- And toss the lonely elm-tree's boughs,
- And silver all the willows,
-
- I see you buffeting the breeze,
- Or with its motion swaying,
- Your notes half drowned against the wind,
- Or down the current playing.
-
- When far away o'er grassy flats,
- Where the thick wood commences,
- The white-sleeved mowers look like specks
- Beyond the zigzag fences.
-
- And noon is hot, and barn-roofs gleam
- White in the pale-blue distance,
- I hear the saucy minstrels still
- In chattering persistence.
-
- When Eve her domes of opal fire
- Piles round the blue horizon,
- Or thunder rolls from hill to hill
- A Kyrie Eleison,
-
- Still, merriest of the merry birds,
- Your sparkle is unfading,
- Pied harlequins of June, no end
- Of song and masquerading.
-
- What cadences of bubbling mirth
- Too quick for bar or rhythm!
- What ecstasies, too full to keep
- Coherent measures with them!
-
- O could I share, without champagne
- Or muscadel, your frolic,
- The glad delirium of your joy,
- Your fun un-apostolic.
-
- Your drunken jargon through the fields,
- Your bobolinkish gabble,
- Your fine anacreontic glee,
- Your tipsy reveller's babble!
-
- Nay, let me not profane such joy
- With similes of folly,
- No wine of earth could waken songs
- So delicately jolly!
-
- O boundless self-contentment, voiced
- In flying air-born bubbles!
- O joy that mocks our sad unrest,
- And drowns our earth-born troubles!
-
- Hope Springs with you; I dread no more
- Despondency and dullness;
- For Good Supreme can never fail
- That gives such perfect fullness.
-
- The Life that floods the happy fields
- With song and light and color
- Will shape our lives to richer states,
- And heap our measures fuller.
C.P. Cranch. September, 1866. Atlantic Monthly 18(107): 321-322.
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