PREFACE

I HAVE deliberated a long time about coupling some of my sketches of outdoor nature with a few chapters of a more purely literary character; and as I have confided to my reader what pleased and engaged me beyond my four walls, to show him what absorbs and delights me inside those walls; especially as I have aimed to bring my outdoor spirit and method within and still look upon my subject with the best naturalist's eye I could command.

I hope, therefore, he will not be scared away when I boldly confront him in the latter portions of my book with this name of strange portent, Walt Whitman, for I assure him that in this misjudged man he may press the strongest poetic pulse that has yet beat in America, or perhaps in modern times.

Then these chapters are a proper supplement or continuation of my themes, and their analogy in literature, because in them we shall "follow out these lessons of the earth and air," and behold their application to higher matters.

It is not an artificially graded path strewn with roses that invites us in this part, but let me hope something better, a rugged trail through the woods

or along the beach where we shall now and then get a whiff of natural air, or a glimpse of something to

"Make the wild blood start

In its mystic springs."

ESOPUS-ON-HUDSON, March, 1877.

BIRDS AND POETS

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BIRDS AND POETS

"In summer, when the shawes be shene,
And leaves be large and long,

It is full merry in fair forest

To hear the fowlès' song.

The wood-wele sang, and wolde not cease,
Sitting upon the spray;

So loud, it wakened Robin Hood

In the greenwood where he lay."

T might almost be said that the birds are all birds of the poets and of no one else, because it is only the poetical temperament that fully responds to them. So true is this, that all the great ornithologists original namers and biographers of the birds- have been poets in deed if not in word. Audubon is a notable case in point, who, if he had not the tongue or pen of the poet, certainly had the eye and ear and heart- "the fluid and attaching character " and the singleness of purpose, the enthusiasm, the unworldliness, the love, that characterize the true and divine race of bards.

So had Wilson, though perhaps not in as large a measure; yet he took fire as only a poet can. While