Literary World [Volume 8, number 2: 1877: page 27]
BURROUGHS'S BIRDS AND POETS.*
THE author of Wake Robin and Winter Sunshine
gives us in the present volume six papers on out-of-doors topics, and four of
"a more purely literary character." In "Birds and Poets," "Touches of Nature,"
"A Bird Medley," "April," "Spring Poems" and "Our Rural Divinity," he gossips
in a charming way on his favorite themes, showing his usual keenness of insight
and nicety of discrimination; and sketches a bird or an animal or a bit of landscape
with a few bold sweeps of his trained hand. What, for instance, could be better
than this:
"The cow belongs more especially to the northern peoples, to the region of
the good green grass. She is the true grazing animal. That broad, smooth,
always dewy nose of hers is just the suggestion of green sward. She caresses the
grass; she sweeps off the ends of the leaves; she reaps it with the soft sickle
of her tongue. She crops close, but she does not bruise or devour the turf like
the horse."
Or this:
"The humid season, with its tender melting blue sky, its fresh, earthly smells,
its new furrow, and its strange feeling of unrest. . . . In spring everything
has such a margin; there are such spaces of silence. The influences are at work
undergroud. Our delight is in a few things. The drying road is enough; a single
wild-flower, the note of the first bird, the partridge drumming in the April woods,
the restless herds, the sheep steering for the uplands, the cow lowing in the
highway or hiding her calf in the bushes, the first fires, the smoke going up
through the shining atmosphere, from the burning of rubbish in gardens and old
fields, etc., each of these simple things fills the breast with yearning and delight,
for they are tokens of the spring."
The remaining essays, which Mr. Burroughs says he hesitated about coupling
with the others are headed "Before Genius," "Before Beauty," "Emerson," and
"The Flight of the Eagle;" and in a very subtle as well as practical sense,
they supplement those on "out-door nature." He says some caustic things about
modern literature, rebuking what he calls the "fashion of the day" in attributing
"all splendid results to genius and culture."
"With two or three exceptions, there is little as yet in American literature
that shows much advance beyond the merely conventional and scholastic—little,
I mean, in which one gets a whiff of the strong, unbreathed air of mountain or
prairie, or a tast of rude, new power that is like the tonic of the sea. . . .
It is verly likely true that our most native and original characters do not yet
take to literature. It is, perhaps, too early in the day."
In the course of his exaltation of Walt Whitman—to whom he devotes the
last fifty pages—Mr. Burroughs thus characterizes our literature and people:
"The soda-fountain with its syrups has got into literature, and furnishes
the popular standard of poetry. The old heroic stamina of our ancestors, that
craved the bitter but nourishing home-brewed, has died out, and in its place there
is a sickly cadaverousness that must be pampered and cosseted. Among educated
people here there is a mania for the bleached, the double-refined; white houses,
white china, white marble and white skins. We take the bone and sinew out of our
flour in order to have white bread and are bolting our literature as fast as possible.
Whitman's "Memoranda during the War," and "Drum-Taps," our author pronounces
"the only literature of the war, thus far, entirely characteristic and worthy
of mention."
The essay on "The Flight of the Eagle" is nothing if not enthusiastic; that
on Emerson is of a different quality—crisp and pungent; and the characterization
of the Concord philosopher is not very wide of the mark:
"From first to last he strikes one as something extremely pure and compact,
like a nut or an egg. . . . He writes short but pregnant chapters on great themes,
as in his 'English Traits,' a book like rich preserves put up pound for pound,
a pound of Emerson to every pound of John Bull. . . . In fact, Emersopn is an
essence, a condensation. . . . he is like those strong, artificial fertilizers.
A pinch of him is equal to a page or two of Johnson."
Birds and Poets is printed in a tasteful style.
*Birds and Poets, with Other Papers. By John Burroughs. Hurd
& Houghton.