The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 05, No. 32, June, 1860. Various
to their lairs in hilly hollows,
A broader splendor issues forth
And on their track in silence follows;
A fuller air swims everywhere,
A freer murmur shakes the bough,
A thousand fires surprise the spires,
And all the city wakes below.
What morn shall rise, what cursed morn,
To find this bright pomp all surrendered,
These palaces an empty shell,
This vigor listless ruin rendered,—
While every sprite of its delight
Mocks fickle echoes through the court,
And in our place a sculptured trace
Saddens some stranger's careless sport?
Oh, gay with all the stately stir,
And bending to your silken flowing,
One day, my banner-poles, ye creak
Naked beneath the high winds blowing!
One day ye fall across the wall
And moulder in the moat's green bosom,
While in the cleft the wild tree left
Bursts into spikes of cruel blossom!
Ah, never dawn that day for me!
O Fate, its fierce foreboding banish!
When all our hosts, like pallid ghosts
Blown on by morning, melt and vanish!
Oh, in the fires of their desires
Consume the toil of those invaders!
And let the brand divide the hand
That grasps the hilt of the Crusaders!
Yet idle words in such a scene!
Yon rosy mists on high careering,—
The Moorish cavaliers who fleet
With hawk and hound and distant cheering,—
The dipping sail puffed to the gale,
The prow that spurns the billow's fawning,—
How can they fade to dimmer shade,
And how this day desert its dawning?
Forget to soar, thou rosy rack!
Ye riders, bronze your airy motion!
Still skim the seas, so snowy craft,—
Forever sail to meet the ocean!
There bid the tide refuse to slide,
Glassing, below, thy drooping pinion,—
Forever cease its wild caprice,
Fallen at the feet of our dominion!
THE HUMMING-BIRD
May 9th.
To-day, Estelle, your special messenger, the Humming-Bird, comes darting to our oriel, my Orient. As I sat sewing, his sudden, unexpected whirr made me look up. How did he know that the very first Japan-pear-bud opened this morning? Flower and bird came together by some wise prescience.
He has been sipping honey from your passion-flowers, and now has come to taste my blossoms. What bright-winged thought of yours sent him so straight to me, across that wide space of sea and land? Did he dart like a sunbeam all the way? There were many of them voyaged together; a little line of wavering light pierced the dark that night.
A large, brave heart has our bold sailor of the upper deep. Old Pindar never saw our little pet, this darling of the New World; yet he says,—
"Were it the will of Heaven, an osier-bough Were vessel safe enough the seas to plough."
Here he is, safe enough, not one tiny feather ruffled,—all the intense life of the tropics condensed into this one live jewel,—the glance of the sun on emeralds and rubies. Is it soft downy feathers that take this rich metallic glow, changing their hue with every rapid turn?
Other birds fly: he darts quick as the glance of the eye,—sudden as thought, he is here, he is there. No floating, balancing motion, like the lazy butterfly, who fans the air with her broad sails. To the point, always to the point, he turns in straight lines. How stumbling and heavy is the flight of the "burly, dozing bumblebee," beside this quick intelligence! Our knight of the ruby throat, with lance in rest, makes wild and rapid sallies on this "little mundane bird,"—this bumblebee,—this rolling sailor, never off his sea-legs, always spinning his long homespun yarns. This rich bed of golden and crimson flowers is a handsome field of tournament. What invisible circle sits round to adjudge the prize?
What secret does he bring me under those misty wings,—that busy birring sound, like Neighbor Clark's spinning-wheel? Is he busy as well, this bit of pure light and heat? Yes! he, too, has got a little home down in the swamp over there,—that bit of a knot on the young oak-sapling. Last year we found a nest (and brought it home) lined with the floss of willow-catkin, stuck all over with lichens, deep enough to secure the two pure round pearls from being thrown out, strongly fastened to the forked branch,—a home so snug, so warm, so soft!—a home "contrived for fairy needs."
Who but the fairies, or Mr. Fine-Ear himself, ever heard the tiny tap of the young bird, when he breaks the imprisoning shell?
The mother-bird knows well the fine sound. Hours? days? no, weeks, she has sat to hear at last that least wave of sound.
What! this tiny bit of restless motion sit there still? Minutes must be long hours to her quick panting heart.
I will just whisper it in your ear, that the meek-looking mother-bird only comes out between daylight and dark,—just like other busy mothers I have known, who take a little run out after tea.
Can it be, that Mr. Ruby-Throat, my preux chevalier, keeps all the sunshiny hours for himself, that he may enjoy to the full his own gay flight?
Ah! you know nothing, hear nothing of woman's rights up there, in that well-ordered household. Were it not well, if we, too, could give up our royal right of choice,—if we could fall back on our strong earth-born instincts, to be, to know, to do, one thing?
See how closely our darling curls up his slender black feet and legs, that we may not see this one bit of mortality about him! No, my little immortal does not touch the earth; he hangs suspended by that long bill, which just tethers him to its flowers. Now and then he will let down the little black tendrils of legs and feet on some bare twig, and there be rests and preens those already smooth plumules with the long slender bodkin you lent him. Now, just now, he darts into my room, coquets with my basket of flowers, "a kiss, a touch, and then away." I heard the whirr of those gauzy wings; it was not to the flowers alone he told his story. You did well to trust this most passionate pilgrim with your secret; the room is radiant with it. Slow-flying doves may well draw the car of Venus; but this arrow tipped with flame darts before, to tell of its coming. What need of word, of song, with that iridescent glow? Some day I will hear the whole story; just now let the Humming-Bird keep it under his misty wings.
I have heard of a lady who reared these little birds from the nest; they would suck honey from her lips, and fly in and out of her chamber. Only think of seeing these callow fledglings! It is as if the winged thought could be domesticated, could learn to make its nest with us and rear its young.
Bountiful Nature has spared to our cold North this one compact bit from the Tropics.
I believe we allow that birds are very highly organized creatures,—next to man, they say. We, with our weary feet plodding always on the earth, our heavy arms pinioned close to our sides!—look at this live creature, with thinnest wing cutting the fine air! We, slow in word, slow in thought!—look at this quivering flame, kindled by some more passionate glance of Nature! Next to man? Yes, we might say next above. Had it not been for