"Fling wide the generous grain; we fling
O'er the dark mould the green of
spring.
For thick the emerald blades shall
grow,
When first the March winds melt the
snow,
And to the sleeping flowers, below,
The early bluebirds sing.
. . . .
Brethren, the sower's task is done.
The seed is in its winter bed.
Now let the dark-brown mould be
spread,
To hide it from the sun,
And leave it to the kindly care
Of the still earth and brooding air,
As when the mother, from her
breast,
Lays the hushed babe apart to rest,
And shades its eyes and waits to see
How sweet its waking smile will be.
The tempest now may smite, the
sleet
All night on the drowned furrow beat,
And winds that, from the cloudy hold
Of winter, breathe the bitter cold,
Stiffen to stone the mellow mould,
Yet safe shall lie the wheat;
Till, out of heaven's unmeasured
blue,
Shall walk again the genial year,
To wake with warmth and nurse with
dew
The germs we lay to slumber here."
Of course the poet was not writing an agricultural essay, yet one does not like to feel that he was obliged to ignore or sacrifice any part of the truth to build up his verse. One likes to see him keep within the fact without being conscious of it or hampered by it, as he does in "The Planting of the Apple-Tree," or in the "Lines to a Water-Fowl."
But there are glimpses of American scenery and climate in Bryant that are unmistakable, as in these lines from "Midsummer:"—
"Look forth upon the earth—her
thousand plants
Are smitten; even the dark,
sun-loving maize
Faints in the field beneath the torrid
blaze;
The herd beside the shaded fountain
pants;
For life is driven from all the
landscape brown;
The bird has sought his tree, the
snake his den,
The trout floats dead in the hot
stream, and men
Drop by the sunstroke in the
populous town."
Here is a touch of our "heated term" when the dogstar is abroad and the weather runs mad. I regret the "trout floating dead in the hot stream," because, if such a thing ever has occurred, it is entirely exceptional. The trout in such weather seek the deep water and the spring holes, and hide beneath rocks and willow banks. The following lines would be impossible in an English poem:—
"The snowbird twittered on the
beechen bough,
And 'neath the hemlock, whose thick
branches bent
Beneath its bright, cold burden, and
kept dry
A circle, on the earth, of withered
leaves,
The partridge found a shelter."
Both Bryant and Longfellow put their spring bluebird in the elm, which is a much better place for the oriole,—the elm-loving oriole. The bluebird prefers a humbler perch. Lowell puts him upon a post in the fence, which is a characteristic attitude:—
"The bluebird, shifting his light load of
song,
From post to post along the cheerless
fence."
Emerson calls him "April's bird," and makes him "fly before from tree to tree," which is also good. But the bluebird is not strictly a songster in the sense in which the song sparrow or the indigo-bird, or the English robin redbreast, is; nor do Bryant's lines hit the mark:—
"The bluebird chants, from the elm's
long branches,
A hymn to welcome the budding
year."