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Then, warmly walled with books,

While my wood-fire supplies the sun's defect,

Whispering old forest-sagas in its dreams,

I take my May down from the happy shelf
Where perch the world's rare song-birds in a row
Waiting my choice to open with full breast,
And beg an alms of spring-time, ne'er denied
Indoors by vernal Chaucer, whose fresh woods
Throb thick with merle and mavis all the year."

LOWELL.

INTRODUCTION

IN writing an introduction to passages from the works of acknowledged masters, there is always danger of seeming to hold a candle to the sun. And when those masters treat of a theme so fresh as that of Nature's Choristers-a theme that touches our heart rather than our mind, and the very essence of whose charm is the subtlety thereof

-one is confronted with the additional difficulty of speaking of that theme without appearing so impertinent as to speak for it and its fit exponents. The amateur who proposes to manipulate the work of the men who have made English literature supreme had need walk humbly and circumspectly, lest he seem to confound his office of priest with that of patron. The poets may be trusted to speak for themselves and their subject more effectively than he could hope to do. A sculptor might as well hope to express in bronze or granite the indefinable essence of music, as an uninspired writer of prose to construe in words the ecstatic song of birds, or imbue his periods with that sublimate of sunlight and ether which even the great masters of poetry have sometimes failed to catch in the

gossamer web of their verse.

Singers alone can hymn the songsters; for to them alone do the gods give, and their fellow-men permit, to speak in transport like the larks and nightingales. The writer of prose must be judicial and restrained. He may not shake his thoughts out rhythmically and extravagantly like the thrush. How, then, could he give an impression of the wild gurgling melody at dawn or moonrise, the fluttering song in cloudland, that sets his heartstrings quivering to its tune, or the sweet merry whisperings that come to him with scent of fir and hyacinth in the sunny noon of spring?

It is this that makes the song-birds so peculiarly the theme of poets: and surely it is true that the rapture of the birds' own song has lent a richer inspiration to the bards when they sang of birds. It is striking to note how frequently the idea of birds and their singing occurs in the freshest and most delightful passages in the literatures of all countries from the earliest periods; and we know that in the time of Aristophanes birds were the fashion. The bird seems naturally to take its place as the symbol of joy. When a poet writes of happiness, he thinks of birds. When he writes of birds, a crowd of sunny memories rushes to his heart; everything morbid and unwholesome flees away; and he sings of happiness. Sometimes it is the joy of hope: sometimes the bliss of a sunny present sometimes it is the happiness of days

INTRODUCTION

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that are gone; but always it is a tender, earnest feeling, partaking of the simplicity and gentle resignation of childhood. And though we may make a shift to extract consolation from the consciousness of wisdom that grows with years, no depth of knowledge can bring such peace to us, or lay so soothing a hand upon the fevered brow of sorrow, as does a breath from the lost Eden of green innocence. Those know this best whose reason does most firmly disown the very simplicity they regard so wistfully; as he who has drunk most deeply of life's fiery vintage finds keenest pleasure in regarding and in dreaming of the innocence he misses in himself. So also we often find the most confirmed cynic toying with mere sentimentalism, and the veriest roué delighting in the simpers of the ingénue. When we are young, we long to feel the stress and tug of life; and we turn away from the quiet valley of simplicity, instinct telling us that there we can learn little that is new. But in a few years, when we have had enough of the fight we sought so restlessly, our hearts hark back and we would almost give our dearly-purchased knowledge in exchange, if we might lie down once again in the sunny sleepy hollow and bask inanely.

"Did any bird come flying

After Adam and Eve,

When the door was shut against them

And they sat down to grieve?"

There the birds were singing always; and that is