On the Wing Dur "little brothers of the air," have you named them all without a gun, as Emerson asks in " Forbearance "? Shy, glancing eyes peer from nests half-hidden in leaves; the forest is vocal with melody, the air is tremulous with the whirr of tiny wings. Poet-singers have written undying lines about their brother minstrels of the wood, and the "blithe lark," especially, has a proud place in poetry, apostrophized as he is by Shakespeare, Shelley, Frederick Tennyson, Wordsworth, and The Ettrick Shepherd. As the skylark's note dies away we hear the saucy chatter of Cranch's Bobolink, the twitter of Keats's Goldfinches, the mournful cry of Celia Thaxter's Sandpiper, and the revolving wheel of Emily Dickinson's Humming-bird, with its resonance of emerald, its rush of cochineal. The feathered warblers, Robin, Bluebird, Swallow, speed their southern flight, but there are other songs of summer, voices of sweet and tiny cousins, heard at the lazy noontide; chirpings, rustlings of the green little vaulters in the sunny grass. And if the wee grasshoppers and those warm little housekeepers the crickets, have served as themes for Keats and Leigh Hunt, so has the humble bee provoked his tribute from the poets: "His feet are shod with gauze, His helmet is of gold; His breast a single onyx With chrysophrase inlaid." Come within earshot of his drowsy hum, his breezy bass, -Father Tabb's publican bee, "Collecting the tax On honey and wax," " or Emerson's yellow-breeched philosopher, "Seeing only what is fair, Sipping only what & sweet.” I'VE plucked the berry from the bush, the brown nut from the tree, But heart of happy little bird ne'er broken was by me. I saw them in their curious nests, close couching, slyly peer With their wild eyes, like glittering beads, to note if harm were near; I passed them by, and blessed them all; I felt that it was good To leave unmoved the creatures small whose home was in the wood. And here, even now, above my head, a lusty rogue doth sing; He pecks his swelling breast and neck, and trims his little wing. He will not fly; he knows full well, while chirping on that spray, I would not harm him for a world, or interrupt his lay. On the Sing on, sing on, blithe bird! and fill my heart Wing with summer gladness; It has been aching many a day with measures full of sadness! WILLIAM MOTHERWELL. To a Skylark Hail to thee, blithe spirit! Bird thou never wert That from heaven or near it Pourest thy full heart In profuse strains of unpremeditated art. Higher still and higher From the earth thou springest, Like a cloud of fire; The blue deep thou wingest, And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest. In the golden light'ning Of the sunken sun, O'er which clouds are bright'ning, Thou dost float and run, Like an embodied joy whose race is just begun The pale purple even In the broad daylight, Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight— Keen as are the arrows Of that silver sphere Whose intense lamp narrows In the white dawn clear, Until we hardly see, we feel, that it is there. All the earth and air The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflow'd. What thou art we know not; What is most like thee? From rainbow clouds there flow not Drops so bright to see As from thy presence showers a rain of melody: Like a poet hidden In the light of thought, To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not: Like a high-born maiden In a palace tower, Soothing her love-laden On the |