or his Muse would not have been so adept and faithful in her hymning descriptions. We will lend a listening ear while she sings her chansons on the virtues of the bird our poet loved so truly. First, I will call attention to the following portraiture of that cavalier of the meadow, the male bobolink, at the season when there are bantlings in the grass-domed nest which demand his paternal care, as well as that of his faithful spouse,—
“Meanwhile that devil-may-care, the bobolink,
Remembering duty, in mid-quaver stops
Just ere he sweeps o’er rapture’s tremulous brink,
And ’twixt the windrows most demurely drops,
A decorous bird of business, who provides
For his brown mate and fledgelings six besides,
And looks from right to left, a farmer ’mid his crops.”
One can almost see the poet leaning against the rail fence of the clover field, with pencil in hand, drawing the portrait of the bird which is posing unconsciously before him, so true is his delineation of bobolink life. But to find Lowell at his best you must read his description of Robert o’ Lincoln at his best. Hark!—
“A week ago the sparrow was divine;