By-Ways and Bird Notes (1885) (Hardcover)

CONTENTS. PAGE IN THE HAUNTS OF THE MOCKING- BIRD 5 A RED-HEADED FAMILY 23 TANGLE-LEAFPAPERSsi 40 TANGLE-LEAF PAPERS II 50 TANGLE-LEAF PAPERS III 59 TANGLE-LEAF PAPERS IV 66 THE THRESHOLD OFTHE GODS 75 BROWSINGAND NIBBLING 95 OUT-DOOR INFLUENCES IN LITERA- TURE 105 A FORTNIGHT IN APALACE OF REEDS . . 1 18 CUCKOO NOTES SOME MINOR SONG-BIRDS BIRDS OFTHE ROCKS 133 151 164 M368459 BY-WAYS AND B I R D-N OT E S . IN THE HAUNTS OF THE MOCKING- BIRD. THE mocking-bird has been called the American nightingale, with a view, no doubt, to inflicting a compliment involving the opera- tion, known to us all, of damning with faint praise. The nightingale presumably is not the sufferer by the comparison, since she holds immemorial title to preeminence amongst sing- ing-birds. The story of Philomela, however, as first told, was not an especially pleasing one, and the poets made no great use of it. Nowhere in Greek or Roman literature, so far as I know, is there any genuine lyric apostro- phe to the nightingale comparable to Sapphos fragment To the Rose still the bird has a prestige gathered from centuries of poetry and upheld by the master romancers of the world. To compare the song of any other bird with that of the nightingale is like instituting a comparison between some poet of to-day and Shakespeare, so far as any sympathy with the would-be rival is concerned. The world has long ago made up its mind, and when the world once does that there is an end, a cul de sac, a stopping-place, of all argument of the question. Indeed, it is a very romantic dis- tance that separates the bird from most of us. Chaucers groves and Shakespeares woods shake out from their leaves a fragrance that reaches us along with asong which is half the birds and half the poets. We connect the nightingales music with a dream of chivalry, troubadours, and mediaeval castles. It is as dear to him who has heard it only in the changes rung by the Persian, French, and bards as it is to him whose chamber English window opens on a choice haunt of the bird in rural England. I might dare to go further and claim that I, who have never heard a nightingale sing, can say with truth that its music is, in a certain as familiar to me as the sound of a run- way, ning stream or the sough of a spring breeze. I often find myself reluctantly shaking off something like a recollection of having somewhere, in some dim old grove, heard the voice that Keats imprisoned in his matchless ode. There is a sort of aerial perspective in the mere name of the nightingale it is like some of those classical allusions which bring into a modern essay suggestions with an Infinite distance in them. So thoroughly has this been felt that it may safely be said that the nightingale has been more frequently mentioned by our American writers, good, bad, and indifferent, than any one of our native birds. No doubt it ought to provoke a smile, this gushing about a music one has never heard but, like the music of the spheres and the roar of the ocean, the nightingales voice is common property, and we all take it as a sort of hereditary music, descending to us by immemorial custom. Its notes are echoing within us, and we feel their authenticity though in fact we know as little about the bird as chemists do about Geber...