Birds and Poets: With Other PapersHoughton, Mifflin, 1904 - 269 pages |
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Common terms and phrases
Æschylus æsthetic April artist BARN SWALLOW beauty behold bird blood bobolink breath brown thrasher character charm color creature cuckoo earth Emerson emotional face fact feeling fields Greek hawks hear heard heart herd hermit thrush human intellectual lark larvæ Leaves of Grass light literary literature living look loon loud master mate melody mind morning mountain nature nest never night nightingale Pe-wee perhaps person plumage poems poet poetic poetry purple finch robin sandpiper says season seems Shakespeare sing snow song song sparrow songster soul sound sparrow species spirit spring stand strong summer swallows sweet Tennyson thee things Thoreau thou thought thrush tion Titmouse traits trees true utter vesper sparrow voice Walt Whitman whole wild Wilson Flagg wings winter wonder wood thrush woods
Popular passages
Page 17 - Leave to the nightingale her shady wood ; A privacy of glorious light is thine; Whence thou dost pour upon the world a flood Of harmony, with instinct more divine; Type of the wise who soar, but never roam; True to the kindred points of Heaven and Home...
Page 27 - Thrice welcome, darling of the spring! Even yet thou art to me No bird, but an invisible thing, A voice, a mystery; The same whom in my school-boy days I listened to; that cry Which made me look a thousand ways, In bush and tree and sky. To seek thee did I often rove Through woods and on the green; And thou wert still a hope, a love; Still longed for, never seen. And I can listen to thee yet; Can lie upon the plain And listen, till I do beget That golden time again.
Page 45 - I watch him as he skims along, Uttering his sweet and mournful cry ; He starts not at my fitful song, Or flash of fluttering drapery ; He has no thought of any wrong, He scans me with a fearless eye. Stanch friends are we, well tried and strong, The little sandpiper and I. Comrade, where wilt thou be to-night When the loosed storm breaks furiously? My driftwood -fire will burn so bright ! To what warm shelter canst thou fly ? I do not fear for thee, though wroth The tempest rushes through the sky...
Page 47 - And the thought of death close-walking the other side of me, And I in the middle as with companions, and as holding the hands of companions, I fled forth to the hiding receiving night that talks not, Down to the shores of the water, the path by the swamp in the dimness, To the solemn shadowy cedars and ghostly pines so still...
Page 128 - IT is the first mild day of March : Each minute sweeter than before, The redbreast sings from the tall larch That stands beside our door. There is a blessing in the air, Which seems a sense of joy to yield To the bare trees, and mountains bare And grass in the green field.
Page 28 - Sweet bird ! thy bower is ever green, Thy sky is ever clear ; Thou hast no sorrow in thy song, No winter in thy year...
Page 24 - Robert of Lincoln's Quaker wife, Pretty and quiet, with plain brown wings, Passing at home a patient life, Broods in the grass while her husband sings : Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, Spink, spank, spink ; Brood, kind creature ; you need not fear Thieves and robbers while I am here. Chee, chee, chee.
Page 17 - 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.
Page 210 - I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the beginning and the end, But I do not talk of the beginning or the end. There was never any more inception than there is now...
Page 51 - IF the red slayer think he slays, Or if the slain think he is slain, They know not well the subtle ways I keep, and pass, and turn again. Far or forgot to me is near; Shadow and sunlight are the same; The vanished gods to me appear; And one to me are shame and fame. They reckon ill who leave me out; When me they fly, I am the wings; I am the doubter and the doubt, And I the hymn the Brahmin sings.