No poet or prosatist, however, comes so near to the bird as the great prose-poet of the Wiltshire Downs:
“The bird upon the tree utters the meaning of the wind—a voice of the grass and wild flower, words of the green leaf; they speak through that slender tone. Sweetness of dew and rifts of sunshine, the dark hawthorn touched with breadths of open bud, the odor of the air, the color of the daffodil—all that is delicious and beloved of spring-time are expressed in his song. Genius is nature, and his lay, like the sap in the bough from which he sings, rises without thought. Nor is it necessary that it should be a song; a few short notes in the sharp spring morning are sufficient to stir the heart. But yesterday the least of them all came to a bough by my window, and in his call I heard the sweet-brier wind rushing over the young grass.”[[10]]
[10]. Richard Jefferies. Field and Hedgerow.
Just what emotion the caw of the crow conveys I am at a loss to determine, unless it be self-complacency—a harsh way of expressing it, it would seem. His notes sound more like anger; and in the woods he certainly does quarrel with the owls, the song-birds, and his own kindred. But his apparent anger may be only feigned, and his voice belie his real character. Assuredly, there was never a more self-complacent tread than the crow’s on a grain field. The farmer and the scarecrow at once become secondary to him, and pilfering becomes almost a virtue, he pilfers with such grace. His tread is as majestic as the soaring of the hawk, and though black as night and evil, his plumage glistens as brightly as light and purity. He seems a true autochthon of the soil. It is much in the way things are done, after all; boldness often passes for innocence, and self-confidence begets security.
Gladness, serene contentment, is most strongly expressed to me by the bobolink, the “okalee” of the starling, and the singular medley of the catbird. To be sure, the catbird frequently justifies his name, and is anything but an agreeable songster; but to make amends for his introductory discords he frequently gives us a delightful palinode. Plaintiveness, sadness over the departed summer, is conveyed by the blackbird’s warble fluted over fields of golden-rod; it is expressed in the trembling notes of the yellow-bird, as he scatters the thistle’s floss to the winds.
If we would carefully analyze the speech of external Nature, I doubt not we could trace some well-defined sentiment in nearly all animate sounds; assuredly in very many of the voices of birds, animals, and insects. For Nature’s moods and tenses are conveyed as strongly through the tympanum of the ear as through the retina of the eye. Their correct interpretation depends upon our inner sight and hearing. I am not sure that in man’s relation to Nature the sense of hearing does not contribute almost as much enjoyment as the sense of seeing. Certainly, Nature would seem but half complete without her characteristic voices. Think of her wrapped in the winding-sheet of eternal silence, a mere mummy, with no song of bird or whisper of wind to impart animation to her scenes. Color and form are but half the landscape; it is sound that gives it life, and renders it companionable. What is winter, in one sense, but absence of sound, not merely the absence of bird and insect voices, but the rustling of leaves and grasses, the murmur of waters, the life and movement of growing vegetation!
Are not the first signs of spring conveyed through sound? Ere yet a song-bird can find an utterance, or grass-blade impart a sense of resurrected life I hear the cracking of the ice and the gurgling of the frost-freed rills. The crow announces the change before the snowdrop comes, and the wild geese proclaim it from the sky before the sallows invite the precocious bee. No doubt the bee is already waiting for the flower, and winnows it into bloom; for no sooner is the corolla ready to expand than I hear his murmurous wings. High in the willow catkins; low down in the horn of the skunk-cabbage; bending the yellow bloom of the first dog-tooth violet, his hum of industry is heard. The bee is perhaps the first constant spring musician, though his is not the earliest vernal voice. The pushing daffodils of the perennial flower-border speak to me of spring, the choir of the toads and hylodes announces it even more emphatically.
How we should miss the voice of Chanticleer were the domestic fowl to become silent! It never occurred to me how important a role he plays until the author of The Bohemians of the Latin Quarter makes him serve as a matutinal alarm to Schaunard in lieu of the time-piece he has pawned. And Herrick, too, in His Grange, or Private Wealth, has the domestic fowl serve a similar purpose:
Though clock
To tell how night draws hence, I’ve none,