III

"The world is too much with us; late and soon,Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:Little we see in Nature that is ours;We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!This sea that bears her bosom to the moon;The winds that will be howling at all hours,And are upgathered now like sleeping flowers;For this, for everything, we are out of tune;It moves us not.—Great God! I'd rather beA pagan suckled in a creed outworn;So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn."There is kept before your mind the unquestionable seriousness of the influences of cosmic forces; the effects of an intimate relationship with Nature. Burroughs always sees the better and larger side of things. You never hear any of the nature prattle so common among the less serious students.At this moment the red-eyed vireo burst in full song only a few feet from us and a Rubenstein would not have commanded our attention quicker. "The little fellow is doing almost the work of two," said the naturalist, so fluent was the song. He came within close range and softened down into a low mellow song, whereupon Mr. Burroughs remarked: "His audience is not quite as large as he first thought, so he is tuning his harp downaccordingly." Here we came into the settlement roadway and returned to the Lodge for dinner.IIIIn the afternoon, we set out early from Woodchuck Lodge for a long tramp through the pasture south of the Burroughs farm and in the direction of the Nath Chase farm. Back through the woods between the Lodge and the old farm, were scattered apple trees, which had some apples on them. Mr. Burroughs told something of the history of some of these apple trees, that they had been grafted many years ago by his father, and that others had been planted by the cattle as they followed the pathway through this pasture. There were signs that the gray squirrels had been eating the apples. We saw several piles of chips and a few apple seeds scattered on the wall fence, which the squirrels had chosen for a festal hall. On this wall, the naturalist would lean and look off over the hills toward the town of Roxbury, and tell of the neighbors who had settled this field and that. His mind sometimes seemed to be on,"Far-off things,And battles long ago."Suddenly he looked around and said: "It's sweet to muse over one's early years and first experiences.I was just thinking of the many times I had gone through these woods. But O, how I dislike to see these trees cut down for wood, when so many are already down and rotting. This patch of woods extended to the bottom of the hillside, when I was a boy, and I think it was much prettier then than it is now." A very interesting piece of natural history pointed out to me beyond this pasture, was the tendency of birch to trace its roots over large areas of stone almost barren of soil. It has a preference for rocky places. The root of this tree will sometimes trace a small crevice in the stone twenty or thirty feet and does not seem to reach into any soil throughout its whole length.At the edge of the flat grass covered hill beyond the pasture, was a perpendicular wall of several feet in height,—the outcrop of the same stratification of stone we had observed during the earlier part of the day. A number of birch roots had reached all the way down to the bottom of this ledge and fastened themselves in the soil below. Several phoebe nests had been built on the shelves of rock along under the ledge, which the naturalist pointed out to me. Under one ledge that extended over at least twelve feet, was a phoebe's nest that Mr. Burroughs thought had been there for more than a quarter of a century. On the table of rock beneath the nest was a pile of waste ten or twelve inches in height, and therewas enough material in the nest itself to build more than a dozen phoebe's nests. The place was so inaccessible to other animals, that the birds took advantage of this, and doubtless made of it hereditary property, handing it down from generation to generation since its discovery.Passing on down through the Scudder pasture toward the lower woods, to the south, we met a lad herding cattle for the night, and after a few words with him, we turned to the left and went up the side of a steep hill through a deep hemlock forest. This was a pretty hard climb, and I kept looking for Mr. Burroughs to stop and blow a little, but not a bit of it. He took the lead and kept up the climb without even a hint of exhaustion. In fact, I had begun to wish that he would stop and rest for a moment, when pointing up to a white wall of stone he said, "There is the Old Gray Ledge. It looks like a white house from here. This is one of the most beautiful places you will find in this part of the Catskill mountains, and O, the times I have come here for rest and study!" There is a rough broken surface of rock wall at least seventy-five feet high, all covered with moss and lichens, and almost as gray as whitewash on a stone house. In the hemlocks toward the valley from here, are hundreds of fine timber trees, and we could hear among them nut-hatches, chickadees and titmice. We spent almost an hour about this beautiful place,discussing in a friendly way, neighbors and people, great and small. Our next task was to get to the top of the Old Gray Ledge, which we did by going a little distance south and picking the place that showed the least resistance. The woods on the top of the Ledge were level and consisted of much shrubbery and some large hardwood trees and a few hemlocks and pines. We soon came out of the woods to the west and entered a pasture on the Nath Chase farm, from which we could see across the beautiful valley to the south and many mountain peaks, among which were a few that Mr. Burroughs said he could see from the top of a mountain by Slabsides, down at West Park. This was the connecting link between the old and the new home.Turning around, we could see to the north across the valley, in which was the Burroughs farm and the Old Clump beyond. There was a swift breeze from the northeast and the air was quite cool for the early part of August. But after our climb up The Old Gray Ledge, it was quite wholesome and renewed our strength. The pure swift mountain breeze fitted well with my own feelings, for I had begun to feel the effects of a steady pull up the hill and needed oxygen and ozone. But best of all, I had enjoyed the day with the man who brought the pleasures of the woods and the mountains to me, and I felt that I had been blest. I had felt the sympathies andlove of a strong poetic pulse. I had a glimpse of something that,"Made the wild blood startIn its mystic springs,"and I wondered if we have any greater heights to look forward to! I wondered if we should ever find in the trackless paths of eternity a joy that would eclipse this! I thought I had learned "that a good man's life is the fruit of the same balance and proportion as that which makes the fields green and the corn ripen. It is not by some fortuitous circumstances, the especial favor of some god, but by living in harmony with immutable laws through which the organic world has evolved, that he is what he is." We reached the Lodge just as the sun was going down, and soon the evening meal was over. I went back across the hill to the old home for the night, and as I passed down the road way, I called to mind many things that had interested me during the day. After I had retired for the night and sleep had been induced, the joys, the pleasures, the happiness of the day, haunted me in my dreams, and I knew that I had 'staid my haste and made delays, and what was mine had known my face.'A CATSKILL MOUNTAIN SIDE WHERE THE PHŒBE BUILDSA CATSKILL MOUNTAIN SIDE WHERE THE PHŒBE BUILDSTHE OLD CLUMPIt is Sunday morning, and the mists are beginning to roll away and the summer sun of August just beginning to smile once more upon a world of beauty and of love, after the ugly days during the latter part of the week. The cattle are lowing to the north and to the south, and the shadows of the clouds are floating o'er the meadows less swiftly. The mountain peaks are clearing up after their cloud-baths. When I reached the Lodge in the early morning, I found John Burroughs preparing breakfast, and I brought the water and the wood and stirred the malted wheat while he prepared some other foods.After the meal was over, I read the papers and walked around in neighboring meadows, while Mr. Burroughs went down to the home farm for a pail of milk. The flickers were playing in the corner of the pasture to the south, and the goldfinches seemed to be feeding their young in the large apple trees across the road, but I never found a nest. To the west I saw an indigo bird flitting about some shrubbery by the stone fence, which attracted me that way. I thought perhaps something had disturbed the birds' nest, but Ilooked in vain for some vindication of my suspicion.By this time, Mr. Burroughs had returned and all were ready to begin our climb to the summit of the Old Clump, the mountain most beloved of all by the naturalist, and the one about which he speaks oftenest. His father's farm extends far up the southeast side of this mountain and, of course, he played on and about it when he was a young boy. The face of this mountain doubtless made inroads on his character, and stimulated him to a love of nature. For on the summit of it, he sits or rolls and dreams of former—and he almost thinks better—days.Here on the summit of this mountain is where Mr. Burroughs wrote, "Mid-summer in the Catskills," August, 1905, which is possibly the best poem he ever wrote, with the exception "Waiting." Just as we had left the Lodge, we came to a tree under which was a large boulder. The naturalist mounted this boulder and sat for a moment sighing: "How many times, I have played upon this rock when I was a boy. I remember mother used to look this way when she did not find us about the house." Below this boulder, two of the small boys in the party found a vesper sparrow's nest, in which we all became interested, but in order to get back to dinner we must be away and up the mountain. To go straight up the side of the Clump would have been a hard climb, sowe went angling across toward the east, and after passing the boys' sleeping place in the trees, we turned back to the north and west, following the old pathway that leads from the Burroughs farm to the mountain top. Not far had we followed this path before we came to a spring flowing with cool, clear water, and nestled in the side of the mountain. Here we all quenched our thirst, Mr. Burroughs taking the lead. "Many times have I quenched my thirst here at this spring," he said. "The Naiads have welcomed me here for more than sixty years, and still they guard this sacred fountain for me. Narcissus meets me here every summer with refreshing beauty after my hard pull up the mountain. I still join the great god Pan in making love to the wood nymphs hereabouts. O, there are so many ways of getting happiness in these places." Imagine how delightful it was to hear the voice of John Burroughs as he told these stories of his love for these his native scenes! There was every indication that he was experiencing much happiness as he recalled his first walks up the mountain and of his first sight of that spring.The mountain woods were beautifully decked with flowers everywhere, theantenariaperhaps taking the lead so far as numbers go. This was particularly plentiful about the top of the mountain. Soon we were on the highest peak from which we could see the many neighboring peaksin all directions, and the blue folds of the ridges, layer upon layer for many miles to the south and east. What a fine view-point! The exhilaration of the mountain air, how much it means after a long hard climb! Down in the valley are markings of the farms with the long straight stone fences, so delicate and so finely drawn! The panoramic view of the valleys present the colorings and fine markings of maps on the pages of a book, but much more beautiful, and in these parts more perfect. The liquid depths of air and long vistas are a feast to the eyes.I was anxious to know where Mr. Burroughs was nestled on this lofty peak when he wrote the poem of which mention has been made, and asked him to point out the place when we reached it. "It is over near the northeast edge of the summit, and we shall soon be there." As we pushed our way between two large boulders where, Mr. Burroughs told us it had long been the custom for young men to kiss their girls as they helped them through there, and of the many he, himself, had kissed there, we came to a large open grassy spot. Here the naturalist sat down and rolled over in the grass, indicating that he had at last reached home. About twenty paces off toward the eastern edge of the mountain top, was a large flat rock, almost as level as a table top, just beneath which was a fine growth of large trees, the tops of which were a little above the table of stone. "Here," hesaid, "is where I began writing 'Midsummer in the Catskills'."The poem begins as follows:"The strident hum of sickle bar,Like giant insect heard afar,Is on the air again;I see the mower where he ridesAbove the level grassy tidesThat flood the meadow plain.""I remember," he says, "on that day I saw, in the field toward the Betsy Bouton place, the cradlers walking through the fields of grain, and it made a deep impression on me.""The cradlers twain with right good will,Leave golden lines across the hill,Beneath the mid-day sun.The cattle dream 'neath leafy tentOr chew the cud of sweet contentKnee-deep in pond or run."We could see the cattle in the nether pasture on the old Burroughs' home place, and my mind was full of the above lines which I had committed to memory when they were first printed."The dome of day o'erbrims with soundFrom humming wings on errands boundAbove the sleeping fields."What a picture of bees in the upper air freighting honey from field to hive and storing it away for the winter supply! The two following stanzas perhaps interpret the beauty of the situation better than any other part of the poem:"Poisèd and full is summer's tideBrimming all the horizon wide,In varied verdure dressed;Its viewless currents surge and beatIn airy billows at my feetHere on the mountain crest."Through pearly depths I see the farms,Where sweating forms and bronzèd armsReap in the land's increase;In ripe repose the forests standAnd veilèd heights on every handSwim in a sea of peace."The truth of these lines lay out before us. There lay the grain in the fields where the cradlers had reaped in the land's increase. There stood the veiled heights on every side which John Burroughs named beginning on the right: Table mountain, Slide mountain, Double Top mountain and Graham. From the front of Woodchuck Lodge he had already named for us Bald Mountain, Hack's Flats, Schutle's and the one we were now on. Truly they were all veiled heightsas we viewed them from the summit of the Old Clump.As I loitered about among the boulders on the mountain I became much interested in the names cut in the large boulders of people who had lived in the Burroughs community, and seeing that Mr. Burroughs himself was also interested in them, I began to ask him about them, and I copied many of them in my note book. Nothing pleased the Naturalist better than to tell of the people who used to be his neighbors, and I think he remembered them all. As we looked out again across the valley, his eyes got a glimpse of the old Betsy Bouton place, and he recalled that she was a widow who had one daughter and two sons. "These were the laziest human beings I ever saw,—these boys. They would sit up by the fire and mumble, while the mother brought in the wood and the water, and cooked the meals, and the daughter would do the milking. Nothing could the mother get out of them, but to sit around the open fire and grumble at their hard lot, and that they had so much to do. She used to have a hard time getting them up and ready for school."From here we could see the vicinity of the little red school house where John Burroughs had gone to school sixty years before, and he told of his experience with Jay Gould. Jay paid him for writing an essay, and he paid Jay eighty cents for a grammar and an algebra. "These were myfirst grammar and algebra, and I paid for them with the money I had earned selling sugar from my individual boiling pan in the sugar bush. I shall tell you about it and show you where I boiled the sugar, as we go down that way."UNDER THE OLD GRAY LEDGEUNDER THE OLD GRAY LEDGEHe enjoyed telling of one certain student—a schoolmate of his who had long curly hair. "His hair was as curly as you ever saw and turned under at the bottom. O, how I longed to have my hair look like his did! I thought it was the prettiest hair I ever saw grow."Our descent from the mountain top was easy. We followed the path to the right coming down, and the decline was a little more gradual. The upper Burroughs pasture extended almost half-way up the mountain side. It was separated from the lower pasture by a stone wall. I never saw so many stones and small boulders in one place as I saw in this lower pasture. The ground was almost covered. There was certainly a much larger crop of these than of grass. Here I thought Deucalion and Pyrrha must have failed to convert stones into people, but continued throwing, even to the tiring of Jupiter's patience. Rolling them down the long steep hill afforded some fine sport for us. Mr. Burroughs told of a very interesting incident in his early life. "I remember," he said, "when I was a young chap I used to roll stones down this hill very often. One day I got a large, round boulder high up the mountain side and turnedit loose with a good push. Those bars down there had just been finished by father and had cost him considerable work and worry. The stone was heavy and was almost a disc, and had gathered considerable momentum as it neared the base of the hill, and ran directly into the bars and literally knocked them to pieces. Perhaps I could not have remembered the incident so well if this had been all, but as a further reminder, father gave me a pretty severe lashing. I remember how out of patience he was at my carelessness."Passing through these bars we went through the sugar maple bush, that had longer than he could remember, supplied the family with syrup and sugar. The old vat and the furnace were there and the shell of a house to ward off the cold winds of April,"While smoking Dick doth boil the sap."I was thinking ofSpring Gladness, andThe Coming of Phoebe,"When buckets shine 'gainst maple treesAnd drop by drop the sap doth flow,When days are warm, but nights do freeze,And deep in woods lie drifts of snow,When cattle low and fret in stall,Then morning brings the phoebe's call,'Phoebe, Phoebe, Phoebe'."As we came down to the roadway that leads from the old farm to Woodchuck Lodge, Mr. Burroughspointed out to us a junco's nest just outside the road. This nest had afforded him much pleasure during his present stay up at Roxbury, as he saw it two or four times a day, as he passed by on his way to his brother's home for milk. On the crest of the hill between the two houses—the old home and Woodchuck Lodge—I stopped and looked for several moments at the place of the naturalist's birth, and at the farm, with all the beautiful meadows and pastures, for I knew that I would not see them again soon. When it was told me that all these meadows and woods and stone walls, look now as they did sixty and more years ago, I could understand how a country lad, born and reared among such scenes, could grow into a great naturalist. I could now enjoy and understand some of the qualities of his literary productions. The country was a new one to me and altogether unlike any I had seen, but having tasted of it through the medium of good literature, I was prepared to make the best of my opportunity to study it. What particularly impressed me, and what was so different from the scenes of my childhood, was the buckwheat fields dotting the meadows here and yonder, and the long straight stone fences marking the meadows and hillsides. "These walls were built by a generation of men that had ginger," Mr. Burroughs said, "a quality so much lacking these days."No words could express the happiness that had come to me during the week that I was rambling through the Catskills. While going down through the meadow in front of Woodchuck Lodge, on my way to the railroad station, I seemed to be flooded with memories of a happy experience. These memories still haunt me and may they continue to do so even unto the end of time. I had learned better than I ever knew, that "this brown, sun-tanned, sin-stained earth is a sister to the morning and the evening star," and that it has more of beauty and love written on it than has ever been read by all the poets in the distant ages past; that there are still left volumes for the interpreter. I had taken a little journey in the divine ship as it sailed over the divine sea. I had heard one talk of the moral of the solar system,—of its harmony, its balance, its compensation, and I thought that there is no deeper lesson to be learned.JOHN BURROUGHS AS POETA few years ago Herr Brandes, the great French critic, in commenting upon the method of criticism used by Saint Beuve, sounded a pretty harsh note to the old school of critics, on method and material in poetry, which in a measure explains what I am about to say of the poetry of John Burroughs. "At the beginning of the century," he says, "imagination was considered the essential quality in poetry. It was his capacity of invention which made the poet a poet; he was not tied down to nature and reality, but was as much at home in the supernatural as in the actual world. But as romanticism, by degrees, developed into realism, creative literature, by degrees, gave up its fantastic excursions into space.... It exerted itself even more to understand than to invent."An observer cannot fail to see in modern poetry a tendency to beautify objects of nature, and facts of science. Past ages were taken up with the heroic, the legendary in poetry. Legends were creations of the mind and in turn subjects for all poetic effort. Some moral and spiritual lesson or truth, must be taught by the introduction of ideals drawn purely from imagination. Such anideal was many times created for the special lesson at hand. The Homeric poems, Virgil's Aeneid, Dante's Divine Comedy and Milton's Paradise Lost, are all poems of this character. They are founded on the unknown and the unknowable, yet they bring to us suggestions that inspire us and make us better for having read them. Milton never knew how Paradise was lost, nor even that it ever was lost. Dante did not know the history of the departed soul, nor did Homer and Virgil know what part the gods and heroes played in the fall of the city of Troy, nor has the riddle of the origin of the Latin and Greek races ever been written. Yet such themes give us pleasure when they come from the great poets, who actually believed what they were writing to be true, and the poems themselves will live forever.We have reached a new order of things in the present era of the world's history, and we must look to something else for poetic inspiration, as well as to interpret the origin of things in the light of the last word on evolution. The minor poets have about worn these old themes threadbare, and the public mind is beginning to look to something else for entertainment. People are now seeking the poetic interpretation of facts of science and of nature, and the poet of the future will have the peculiar task of giving us new eyes with which to see truth, instead of leading us into fields of fancy.John Burroughs is an interpreter of this latter kind. He has gone to nature with the poet's eye, and has needed no fiction to get us interested in what he is trying to tell us. The facts need only to be seen with the poet's eyes to make them beautiful, and he has translated them in terms of the human soul, without having to create beings of fancy to interest us while he tells the message. This is what differentiates his prose and poetry from the poetry of the past. It is true, he ranges from the commonplace to the sublime, but in it all with unfaltering devotion to truth, which should be the aim of every poet and is the aim of every true poet, despite the claims of some that literature is only to entertain, and should never be taken seriously. If it is not serious, it is not literature, and if it is serious, it will always have, as its entering wedge, some fundamental truth. The whole aim of Burroughs is to lead humanity into the proper method of interpreting the truths of nature, and if all his poetry is not the best, he has sacrificed poetry rather than truth and owns up to it like a man. He says: "My poetry is not the free channel of myself that my prose is. I, myself, do not think that my poetry takes rank with my prose." His best poetry takes rank with his or any body's prose. Replying to some questions with reference toMid-summer in the Catskills, Mr. Burroughs says: "It was an attempt to paint faithfully, characteristic mid-summerscenes of that locality. I do not think it ranks high as poetry, but it is true. The genesis of such a poem, or of any poem, is hidden in the author's subconsciousness." Perched on a mountain top that overlooked the beautiful valleys amid the Catskill mountains, and seeing the many activities of farm life in August, Mr. Burroughs saw the beauty and simplicity of the situation, and could not forego his duty of telling it to the world."The strident hum of sickle-bar,Like giant insect heard afar,Is on the air again;I see the mower where he ridesAbove the level grassy tidesThat flood the meadow plain."From beginning to end the poem paints the rural life amid the Catskills in its busiest season, and associates with it all the best in Nature. It is literally a poet's vision of his own country, after many years absence from the fields he paints. How many times he himself has gone."Above the level grassy tides,That flood the meadow plain,"but perhaps without seeing the beauty that the scene now brings to him.ON THE SUMMIT OF THE OLD CLUMP, LOOKING IN THE VALLEY BELOW "WHERE SWEATING FORMS AND BRONZED ARMS REAP IN THE LAND'S INCREASE"ON THE SUMMIT OF THE OLD CLUMP, LOOKING IN THE VALLEY BELOW "WHERE SWEATING FORMS AND BRONZED ARMS REAP IN THE LAND'S INCREASE"Far different from this is his first poetry, which is the expression of a youth groping in the dark for some unknown god, with his only guide that of faith in the world, faith in himself and faith in his fellowman. He says of his early poem: "Waiting was written in 1862, during a rather gloomy and doubtful period of my life. I was poor, was in doubt as to my career, did not seem to be able to get hold of myself, nor to bring myself to bear upon the problems before me. Yet underneath all was this abiding faith that I should get what belonged to me; that sooner or later I should find my own. The poem was first printed in the old Knickerbocker Magazine of New York, in the fall of 1862. I received nothing for it. I builded better than I knew. It has proved a true prophesy of my life.""Serene I fold my hands and wait,Nor care for wind, nor tide, nor sea;I rave no more 'gainst Time or Fate,For lo! my own shall come to me."I stay my haste, I make delays,For what avails this eager pace?I stand amid the eternal ways,And what is mine shall know my face."Asleep, awake, by night or day,The friends I seek are seeking me;No wind can drive my bark astray,Nor change the tide of destiny."What matter if I stand alone?I wait with joy the coming years;My heart shall reap where it hath sown,And garner up its fruits of tears."The waters know their own, and drawThe brook that springs in yonder heights;So flows the good with equal lawUnto the soul of pure delights."The stars come nightly to the sky;The tidal wave unto the sea;Nor time, nor space, nor deep, nor high,Can keep my own away from me."It is this willingness to wait the results of his efforts without fretting or worrying, to which Mr. Burroughs owes his success. This I think, is what has toned and sweetened his prose and poetry, and makes him so readable. He looks for truth and finds it, and lets it ripen into expression in his mind, and we get the good after the smelting process has completed its work, and the dross all worked off. The above poem has been a true prophesy of his life. His own has come to him, and he is now experiencing the richest reward for his long years of waiting and patience. Iftoo much success comes to us in the beginning of any career, the career is most likely to suffer, or possibly better, we are likely to develop a little vain glory and never return to the proper attitude to truth and service. Mr. Burroughs in his plain simple way has been 'still achieving, still pursuing,' and has long since learned 'to labor and to wait.' His attitude toward his work is almost as pleasant as the work itself. Never in a hurry—though he always manages to get much done. The melancholy days have been 'few and far between' with him, though we do see some few sad but wholesome lines in his poetry. These almost sound like some homesick visitor in a foreign land. The following from the poem, "In Blooming Orchards," is a good illustration of this:"My thoughts go homeward with the bees;I dream of youth and happier days—Of orchards where amid the treesI loitered free from time's decrees,And loved the birds and learned their ways."Oh, orchard thoughts and orchard sighs,Ye, too, are born of life's regrets!The apple bloom I see with eyesThat have grown sad in growing wise,Through Mays that manhood ne'er forgets.""The Return" is another of his poems in which this longing for the days of his youth crops out:"O sad, sad hills! O cold, cold hearth!In sorrow he learned this truth—One may go back to the place of his birth,He cannot go back to his youth."Again in "Snow Birds" he says:"Thy voice brings back dear boyhood daysWhen we were gay together."His contact with out-door life and his habits of observation are unmistakably those of a poet. "In the rugged trail through the woods or along the beach we shall now and then get a whiff of natural air, or a glimpse of something to"Make the wild blood startIn its mystic springs."Burroughs says himself, 'the very idea of a bird is a symbol and a suggestion to the poet. How many suggestions to the poet in their flight and song! Indeed, is not the bird the original type and teacher of the poet, and do we not demand of the human thrush or lark that he shake out his carols in the same free manner as his winged prototype?... The bestlyric pieces, how like they are to certain bird-songs!—clear, ringing, ecstatic, and suggesting that challenge and triumph which the outpouring of the male bird contains.' Again he says 'Keats and Shelly have pre-eminently the sharp semi-tones of the sparrows and larks.'But what shall we say of Burroughs? His poetry is somewhat matter-of-fact, like the songs of the Indigo bunting and the Thrushes, and we cannot help but feel that the songs of these birds had the effect on him that Burns speaks of in one of his letters: "I never hear the loud, solitary whistle of the curlew in a summer noon, or the wild, mixing cadence of a troop of gray plovers in an autumnal morning, without feeling an elevation of the soul like the enthusiasm of devotion or poetry." Verily he has achieved his purpose. 'He has brought home the bough with the bird he heard singing upon it. His verse is full of the spirit of the woods and fields; the winds of heaven blow through it; there is the rustle of leaves, the glint of sunlight; the voices of the feathered folk are present. One finds himself in touch with out-doors in every line.' O, what a blessing when one can drink from the great fountain of Nature! When one can be so inured with the larger and more wholesome truths of the universe that he forgets to fret and to make records of the negative forces of the world! This we claim is pre-eminently true of Burroughs. He tells truths aboutNature in his simple, musical verse, and almost vindicates Wordsworth's definition of poetry: "The breath and finer spirit of all knowledge," or "The impassioned expression which is in the countenance of all science." I would almost say of him what Dryden said of Chaucer: "He is a perpetual fountain of good sense." Perhaps Mr. Dowden, in speaking of Coleridge's poetry, comes nearer than any one else to the truth about Burroughs' poetry. "These poems contemplate and describe Nature in a resting and meditative temper. There is no passionate feeling in their delight. The joy he has in the beauty of the world is the joy of dreaming, often only a recollected joy in what he has seen. He found in poetry, paths of his imagination. The pensiveness, the dying fall, the self-loving melancholy, are harmonized by him with Nature." Thoreau says in one of his books: "Very few men can speak of Nature with any truth. They overstep her modesty somehow or other, and confer no favor." The richest flavor in the poetry of John Burroughs is the flavor of truth, and 'beauty is truth, truth beauty.' Unlike Thoreau, he never forgets his fellowmen, nor has he ever failed to find beauty in man as well as in Nature."He sees the mower where he ridesAbove the level grassy tidesThat flood the meadow plain,"and writes a poem. He dislikes the conventional in man no less than he dislikes the conventional in poetry, but man unaffected is as beautiful as the Nature that surrounds him.A few years ago when Mr. E. H. Harriman took a number of friends to Alaska on what was known as The Harriman Alaska Expedition, John Burroughs was selected as a purely literary man to write a narrative of the Expedition. In addition to the story of the trip, Mr. Burroughs was so inspired with the new scenery of those Borean Hills that the muse seized him and the result was three of his best poems:To the Oregon Robin,To the Golden Crown Sparrow of Alaska, andTo the Lapland Longspur. Since that trip in 1899, he has written no verse, I believe, exceptThe Return. Before then he was an irregular contributor of poetry to the current magazines since the appearance ofWaiting, in 1862. He says now that he does not seem to be in a mood for poetry, but that he may find his muse again some day. The total number of his poems in print amounts to only thirty-five and none of them are lengthy. The longest of all is his very life which is to me one continuous poem. His verses are only sparks from the life in which they grew, and never rise to the height of the fountain head.Perhaps one way to test a poet is to measure him by the number of single line poems that canbe found in his poetry; lines that make the real poem of a number of verses. Pope thought that a long poem was a contradiction of terms, and we certainly know many references in the poets to suggestive lines that are almost poems in themselves. Wordsworth'sSolitary Reapercontains one or two passages of this kind."Perhaps the plaintive numbers flowFor old, unhappy, far-off things,And battles long ago."or the following from theOde:"Our noisy years seem moments in the beingOf the eternal Silence."Another of his most exquisite lines is,"And the stars move along the edges of the hills."Walter Pater finds in Wordsworth's poetry an extraordinary number of these short passage poems, which he called 'delicious morsels.' Coleridge says of Wordsworth: "Since Milton, I know of no poet with so many felicitous and unforgetable lines." Many critics have found these suggestive lines in the poets, and I find Wordsworth full of them. The lines of this kind that I find in the poetry of John Burroughs are rather numerous for the amount of poetry he gave to the world, and some of them are as fine as the language has."Like mellow thunder leagues away,""I hear the wild bee's mellow chord,In airs that swim above,""Once more the tranquil days brood o'er the hills,And sooth earth's toiling breast,""The dome of day o'erbrims with soundFrom humming wings on errands bound,""Pausing in the twilight dim,Hear him lift his evening hymn,""Again from out the garden hivesThe exodus of frenzied bees;The humming cyclone onward drives,Or finds repose amid the trees.""Then waiting long hath recompense,And all the world is glad with May.""Oh, skater in the fields of air," he says of theswallow. How well this expresses the flight of the swallow!"The robin perched on treetop tallHeavenward lifts his evening call.""Forth from the hive go voyaging bees,Cruising far each sunny hour."There are many passages of this kind in his poems and they express the moods of Nature, perhaps as well as it is possible for them to be put in words. InArbutus Days, he uses the following figure to paint a spring day:"Like mother bird upon her nestThe day broods o'er the earth."To him the common things are all beautiful and if we only have the eyes to see with, they are made beautiful for us by him. Recognizing the fate of every insincere book, he declares: "Only an honest book can live; only absolute sincerity can stand the test of time. Any selfish or secondary motive vitiates a work of art, as it vitiates a religious life. Indeed, I doubt if we fully appreciate the literary value of staple, fundamental human virtues and qualities—probity, directness, simplicity, sincerity, love." He is probably not an inspired poet, but I shall claim for him that heis an honest singer, a sincere interpreter of Nature, and every virtue referred to in the above quotation he has woven intoBird and Bough. What he says of another we can appropriately say of him: "This poet sees the earth as one of the orbs, and has sought to adjust his imagination to the modern problems and conditions, always taking care, however, to preserve an outlook into the highest regions."LOOKING ACROSS THE PASTURE WALL IN THE DIRECTION OF THE NATHAN CHASE FARMLOOKING ACROSS THE PASTURE WALL IN THE DIRECTION OF THE NATHAN CHASE FARMJOHN BURROUGHS AND WALT WHITMANA certain publisher, who honored very much Walt Whitman, could have paid him no higher tribute than to have closed the preface to Whitman's Poems as follows: "To have met Whitman was a privilege, to have been his friend was an honor. The latter was mine; and among the many reminiscences of my life, none are to me more pleasing than those which gather about the name of 'The Good Grey Poet'."John Burroughs was for thirty years the intimate friend and constant associate of Walt Whitman, and I have heard him say that those were among the most pleasant years of his life. All who ever knew Whitman, and became in any way intimate with him, have practically the same to say of him. No writer ever unfolded himself and his greatness more completely than Whitman, and yet we have a great many excellent critics who are pretty harsh on him. This we believe is so, because the critics have not read the poet aright. They have failed to get out of the poems what was put in them. Whitman is not a poet according to classical standards, but as a "Creator" he is.Emerson says of his poetry: "I find it the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed." Julian Hawthorne says of it: "Original and forceful, Whitman cannot be judged by ordinary literary standards. His scornful trampling upon all metrical rules, and his freedom in treating of matters, usually passed in silence, have so far been a decided barrier to the approval of his work."Professor Underwood of the California University has the following good word for the poet: "Pupils who are accustomed to associate the idea of poetry with regular classic measure in rhyme, or in ten-syllabled blank verse or elastic hexameter, will commence these short and simple prose sentences with surprise, and will wonder how any number of them can form a poem. But let them read aloud with a mind in sympathy with the picture as it is displayed, and they will find by Nature's unmistakable response, that the author is a poet, and possesses the poets' incommunicable power to touch the heart."Professor Pattee of the Pennsylvania State College, on the other hand says: "It is certainly true that to the majority of readers, 'Leaves of Grass', contains a few good things amid a disgusting mass of rubbish."Whitman is confessedly the poet of the body. His book is not upward. He grovels in the earthly and disgusting parts of human life and experience. His egotism is remarkable."All the great poets have looked away from their disgusting surroundings and fleshly fetters, into a world of their creation that was bright and ethereal, but Whitman cries: 'I am satisfied with the perishable and the casual.' This alone would debar him from the company of the great masters of song."Professor Newcomer of Stanford University, divides honors by offending and defending:First: "It deliberately violates the rules of art, and unless we admit that our rules are idle, we must admit Whitman's defects."Second: "It is diffuse, prolix."Third: "This is perhaps the most that can be charged—he was needlessly gross."Fourth: "The innovations in his vocabulary are inexcusable."In the following, he as faithfully defends the poet.First: Of the charged egotism: "It was not to parade himself as an exceptional being, but rather as an average man to hold the mirror up to other men and declare his kinship with them."Second: "Taking Whitman simply at his own valuation we get much. The joys of free fellowship, the love of comrades, none has sung more heartily or worthily. And his courage and optimism are as deep as Emerson's."Third: "He became the truest laureate of the war, and of Lincoln the idol of the people."Fourth: "Comerado this is no book. Who touches this touches a man! As such, therefore, the book must go down to posterity, not a perfect song, but a cry vibrant still with the feeling of the man who uttered it."Professor Newcomer closes his estimate by the declaration that Whitman stands for the American people, but not in the sense that Washington or Lincoln or Lowell does, and that his office was somewhat like one who stands by and cheers while the procession goes by. He thinks that Whitman did not sit in the seats of the mighty.Charles W. Hubner is much more charitable and in fact just, with our poet of the body. He says: "Proclaiming the sanctity of manhood and womanhood, the power and eminence of God within us and without us; the divine relationship of body and soul; the eternalness of spirit and matter, he aims to teach us that all of these are manifestations of the Almighty spirit, present within and without all things, and out of whom all created things have come." How far this critic removes Whitman from the class of those who stood by and cheered while the procession moved on! Hubner makes him areal teacherand revealer of divine laws and eternal truth.Joel Chandler Harris has also given a vivid picture and a most wholesome interpretation of Whitman: "In order to appreciate Whitman's poetry and his purpose, it is necessary to possessthe intuition that enables the mind to grasp in instant and express admiration, the vast group of facts that make man—that make liberty—that make America. There is no poetry in the details; it is all in the broad, sweeping, comprehensive assimilation of the mighty forces behind them—the inevitable, unaccountable, irresistible forward movement of man in the making of the republic." These estimates pro and con could be multiplied indefinitely.How much more beautiful it is to face this new force in American poetry and deal with it justly, than to stand off and bark like some of our lesser critics have done and are doing! A recent comment upon Whitman says he has come to stay, and we must make up our minds to study him and to dispose of him by getting in sympathy with him, rather than by decrying him. This seems the just way, and the only safe way to deal with any great original force in literature.John Burroughs has undoubtedly interpreted Whitman better than any other critic, and unquestionably owes Whitman more than any one else. He has found in the poet what so many others have found in Burroughs. "Whitman does not to me suggest the wild and unkempt, as he seems to do to many; he suggests the cosmic and the elemental.... He cherished the hope that he had put into his 'Leaves', some of the tonic and fortifying quality of Nature inher more grand and primitive aspects." From Whitman, I am constrained to believe, Burroughs has drawn much of his primitive strength as a writer. Whitman opened the book of Nature to him, and led him into a certain wilderness of beauty. At twenty, Burroughs began to read Whitman's poems, and says of them: "I was attracted by the new poet's work from the first. It seemed to let me into a larger, freer air than I found in the current poetry.... Not a poet of dells and fells, but of the earth and the orbs." He knew that he had found in Whitman a very strong and imposing figure, but he was doubly reassured when he came upon the statement from the English critic, John Addington Symonds, that Whitman had influenced him more than any other book except the Bible,—more than Plato, more than Goethe.

There is kept before your mind the unquestionable seriousness of the influences of cosmic forces; the effects of an intimate relationship with Nature. Burroughs always sees the better and larger side of things. You never hear any of the nature prattle so common among the less serious students.

At this moment the red-eyed vireo burst in full song only a few feet from us and a Rubenstein would not have commanded our attention quicker. "The little fellow is doing almost the work of two," said the naturalist, so fluent was the song. He came within close range and softened down into a low mellow song, whereupon Mr. Burroughs remarked: "His audience is not quite as large as he first thought, so he is tuning his harp downaccordingly." Here we came into the settlement roadway and returned to the Lodge for dinner.

In the afternoon, we set out early from Woodchuck Lodge for a long tramp through the pasture south of the Burroughs farm and in the direction of the Nath Chase farm. Back through the woods between the Lodge and the old farm, were scattered apple trees, which had some apples on them. Mr. Burroughs told something of the history of some of these apple trees, that they had been grafted many years ago by his father, and that others had been planted by the cattle as they followed the pathway through this pasture. There were signs that the gray squirrels had been eating the apples. We saw several piles of chips and a few apple seeds scattered on the wall fence, which the squirrels had chosen for a festal hall. On this wall, the naturalist would lean and look off over the hills toward the town of Roxbury, and tell of the neighbors who had settled this field and that. His mind sometimes seemed to be on,

"Far-off things,And battles long ago."

Suddenly he looked around and said: "It's sweet to muse over one's early years and first experiences.I was just thinking of the many times I had gone through these woods. But O, how I dislike to see these trees cut down for wood, when so many are already down and rotting. This patch of woods extended to the bottom of the hillside, when I was a boy, and I think it was much prettier then than it is now." A very interesting piece of natural history pointed out to me beyond this pasture, was the tendency of birch to trace its roots over large areas of stone almost barren of soil. It has a preference for rocky places. The root of this tree will sometimes trace a small crevice in the stone twenty or thirty feet and does not seem to reach into any soil throughout its whole length.

At the edge of the flat grass covered hill beyond the pasture, was a perpendicular wall of several feet in height,—the outcrop of the same stratification of stone we had observed during the earlier part of the day. A number of birch roots had reached all the way down to the bottom of this ledge and fastened themselves in the soil below. Several phoebe nests had been built on the shelves of rock along under the ledge, which the naturalist pointed out to me. Under one ledge that extended over at least twelve feet, was a phoebe's nest that Mr. Burroughs thought had been there for more than a quarter of a century. On the table of rock beneath the nest was a pile of waste ten or twelve inches in height, and therewas enough material in the nest itself to build more than a dozen phoebe's nests. The place was so inaccessible to other animals, that the birds took advantage of this, and doubtless made of it hereditary property, handing it down from generation to generation since its discovery.

Passing on down through the Scudder pasture toward the lower woods, to the south, we met a lad herding cattle for the night, and after a few words with him, we turned to the left and went up the side of a steep hill through a deep hemlock forest. This was a pretty hard climb, and I kept looking for Mr. Burroughs to stop and blow a little, but not a bit of it. He took the lead and kept up the climb without even a hint of exhaustion. In fact, I had begun to wish that he would stop and rest for a moment, when pointing up to a white wall of stone he said, "There is the Old Gray Ledge. It looks like a white house from here. This is one of the most beautiful places you will find in this part of the Catskill mountains, and O, the times I have come here for rest and study!" There is a rough broken surface of rock wall at least seventy-five feet high, all covered with moss and lichens, and almost as gray as whitewash on a stone house. In the hemlocks toward the valley from here, are hundreds of fine timber trees, and we could hear among them nut-hatches, chickadees and titmice. We spent almost an hour about this beautiful place,discussing in a friendly way, neighbors and people, great and small. Our next task was to get to the top of the Old Gray Ledge, which we did by going a little distance south and picking the place that showed the least resistance. The woods on the top of the Ledge were level and consisted of much shrubbery and some large hardwood trees and a few hemlocks and pines. We soon came out of the woods to the west and entered a pasture on the Nath Chase farm, from which we could see across the beautiful valley to the south and many mountain peaks, among which were a few that Mr. Burroughs said he could see from the top of a mountain by Slabsides, down at West Park. This was the connecting link between the old and the new home.

Turning around, we could see to the north across the valley, in which was the Burroughs farm and the Old Clump beyond. There was a swift breeze from the northeast and the air was quite cool for the early part of August. But after our climb up The Old Gray Ledge, it was quite wholesome and renewed our strength. The pure swift mountain breeze fitted well with my own feelings, for I had begun to feel the effects of a steady pull up the hill and needed oxygen and ozone. But best of all, I had enjoyed the day with the man who brought the pleasures of the woods and the mountains to me, and I felt that I had been blest. I had felt the sympathies andlove of a strong poetic pulse. I had a glimpse of something that,

"Made the wild blood startIn its mystic springs,"

and I wondered if we have any greater heights to look forward to! I wondered if we should ever find in the trackless paths of eternity a joy that would eclipse this! I thought I had learned "that a good man's life is the fruit of the same balance and proportion as that which makes the fields green and the corn ripen. It is not by some fortuitous circumstances, the especial favor of some god, but by living in harmony with immutable laws through which the organic world has evolved, that he is what he is." We reached the Lodge just as the sun was going down, and soon the evening meal was over. I went back across the hill to the old home for the night, and as I passed down the road way, I called to mind many things that had interested me during the day. After I had retired for the night and sleep had been induced, the joys, the pleasures, the happiness of the day, haunted me in my dreams, and I knew that I had 'staid my haste and made delays, and what was mine had known my face.'

A CATSKILL MOUNTAIN SIDE WHERE THE PHŒBE BUILDS

It is Sunday morning, and the mists are beginning to roll away and the summer sun of August just beginning to smile once more upon a world of beauty and of love, after the ugly days during the latter part of the week. The cattle are lowing to the north and to the south, and the shadows of the clouds are floating o'er the meadows less swiftly. The mountain peaks are clearing up after their cloud-baths. When I reached the Lodge in the early morning, I found John Burroughs preparing breakfast, and I brought the water and the wood and stirred the malted wheat while he prepared some other foods.

After the meal was over, I read the papers and walked around in neighboring meadows, while Mr. Burroughs went down to the home farm for a pail of milk. The flickers were playing in the corner of the pasture to the south, and the goldfinches seemed to be feeding their young in the large apple trees across the road, but I never found a nest. To the west I saw an indigo bird flitting about some shrubbery by the stone fence, which attracted me that way. I thought perhaps something had disturbed the birds' nest, but Ilooked in vain for some vindication of my suspicion.

By this time, Mr. Burroughs had returned and all were ready to begin our climb to the summit of the Old Clump, the mountain most beloved of all by the naturalist, and the one about which he speaks oftenest. His father's farm extends far up the southeast side of this mountain and, of course, he played on and about it when he was a young boy. The face of this mountain doubtless made inroads on his character, and stimulated him to a love of nature. For on the summit of it, he sits or rolls and dreams of former—and he almost thinks better—days.

Here on the summit of this mountain is where Mr. Burroughs wrote, "Mid-summer in the Catskills," August, 1905, which is possibly the best poem he ever wrote, with the exception "Waiting." Just as we had left the Lodge, we came to a tree under which was a large boulder. The naturalist mounted this boulder and sat for a moment sighing: "How many times, I have played upon this rock when I was a boy. I remember mother used to look this way when she did not find us about the house." Below this boulder, two of the small boys in the party found a vesper sparrow's nest, in which we all became interested, but in order to get back to dinner we must be away and up the mountain. To go straight up the side of the Clump would have been a hard climb, sowe went angling across toward the east, and after passing the boys' sleeping place in the trees, we turned back to the north and west, following the old pathway that leads from the Burroughs farm to the mountain top. Not far had we followed this path before we came to a spring flowing with cool, clear water, and nestled in the side of the mountain. Here we all quenched our thirst, Mr. Burroughs taking the lead. "Many times have I quenched my thirst here at this spring," he said. "The Naiads have welcomed me here for more than sixty years, and still they guard this sacred fountain for me. Narcissus meets me here every summer with refreshing beauty after my hard pull up the mountain. I still join the great god Pan in making love to the wood nymphs hereabouts. O, there are so many ways of getting happiness in these places." Imagine how delightful it was to hear the voice of John Burroughs as he told these stories of his love for these his native scenes! There was every indication that he was experiencing much happiness as he recalled his first walks up the mountain and of his first sight of that spring.

The mountain woods were beautifully decked with flowers everywhere, theantenariaperhaps taking the lead so far as numbers go. This was particularly plentiful about the top of the mountain. Soon we were on the highest peak from which we could see the many neighboring peaksin all directions, and the blue folds of the ridges, layer upon layer for many miles to the south and east. What a fine view-point! The exhilaration of the mountain air, how much it means after a long hard climb! Down in the valley are markings of the farms with the long straight stone fences, so delicate and so finely drawn! The panoramic view of the valleys present the colorings and fine markings of maps on the pages of a book, but much more beautiful, and in these parts more perfect. The liquid depths of air and long vistas are a feast to the eyes.

I was anxious to know where Mr. Burroughs was nestled on this lofty peak when he wrote the poem of which mention has been made, and asked him to point out the place when we reached it. "It is over near the northeast edge of the summit, and we shall soon be there." As we pushed our way between two large boulders where, Mr. Burroughs told us it had long been the custom for young men to kiss their girls as they helped them through there, and of the many he, himself, had kissed there, we came to a large open grassy spot. Here the naturalist sat down and rolled over in the grass, indicating that he had at last reached home. About twenty paces off toward the eastern edge of the mountain top, was a large flat rock, almost as level as a table top, just beneath which was a fine growth of large trees, the tops of which were a little above the table of stone. "Here," hesaid, "is where I began writing 'Midsummer in the Catskills'."

The poem begins as follows:

"The strident hum of sickle bar,Like giant insect heard afar,Is on the air again;I see the mower where he ridesAbove the level grassy tidesThat flood the meadow plain."

"I remember," he says, "on that day I saw, in the field toward the Betsy Bouton place, the cradlers walking through the fields of grain, and it made a deep impression on me."

"The cradlers twain with right good will,Leave golden lines across the hill,Beneath the mid-day sun.The cattle dream 'neath leafy tentOr chew the cud of sweet contentKnee-deep in pond or run."

We could see the cattle in the nether pasture on the old Burroughs' home place, and my mind was full of the above lines which I had committed to memory when they were first printed.

"The dome of day o'erbrims with soundFrom humming wings on errands boundAbove the sleeping fields."

What a picture of bees in the upper air freighting honey from field to hive and storing it away for the winter supply! The two following stanzas perhaps interpret the beauty of the situation better than any other part of the poem:

"Poisèd and full is summer's tideBrimming all the horizon wide,In varied verdure dressed;Its viewless currents surge and beatIn airy billows at my feetHere on the mountain crest."Through pearly depths I see the farms,Where sweating forms and bronzèd armsReap in the land's increase;In ripe repose the forests standAnd veilèd heights on every handSwim in a sea of peace."

"Poisèd and full is summer's tideBrimming all the horizon wide,In varied verdure dressed;Its viewless currents surge and beatIn airy billows at my feetHere on the mountain crest.

"Through pearly depths I see the farms,Where sweating forms and bronzèd armsReap in the land's increase;In ripe repose the forests standAnd veilèd heights on every handSwim in a sea of peace."

The truth of these lines lay out before us. There lay the grain in the fields where the cradlers had reaped in the land's increase. There stood the veiled heights on every side which John Burroughs named beginning on the right: Table mountain, Slide mountain, Double Top mountain and Graham. From the front of Woodchuck Lodge he had already named for us Bald Mountain, Hack's Flats, Schutle's and the one we were now on. Truly they were all veiled heightsas we viewed them from the summit of the Old Clump.

As I loitered about among the boulders on the mountain I became much interested in the names cut in the large boulders of people who had lived in the Burroughs community, and seeing that Mr. Burroughs himself was also interested in them, I began to ask him about them, and I copied many of them in my note book. Nothing pleased the Naturalist better than to tell of the people who used to be his neighbors, and I think he remembered them all. As we looked out again across the valley, his eyes got a glimpse of the old Betsy Bouton place, and he recalled that she was a widow who had one daughter and two sons. "These were the laziest human beings I ever saw,—these boys. They would sit up by the fire and mumble, while the mother brought in the wood and the water, and cooked the meals, and the daughter would do the milking. Nothing could the mother get out of them, but to sit around the open fire and grumble at their hard lot, and that they had so much to do. She used to have a hard time getting them up and ready for school."

From here we could see the vicinity of the little red school house where John Burroughs had gone to school sixty years before, and he told of his experience with Jay Gould. Jay paid him for writing an essay, and he paid Jay eighty cents for a grammar and an algebra. "These were myfirst grammar and algebra, and I paid for them with the money I had earned selling sugar from my individual boiling pan in the sugar bush. I shall tell you about it and show you where I boiled the sugar, as we go down that way."

UNDER THE OLD GRAY LEDGE

He enjoyed telling of one certain student—a schoolmate of his who had long curly hair. "His hair was as curly as you ever saw and turned under at the bottom. O, how I longed to have my hair look like his did! I thought it was the prettiest hair I ever saw grow."

Our descent from the mountain top was easy. We followed the path to the right coming down, and the decline was a little more gradual. The upper Burroughs pasture extended almost half-way up the mountain side. It was separated from the lower pasture by a stone wall. I never saw so many stones and small boulders in one place as I saw in this lower pasture. The ground was almost covered. There was certainly a much larger crop of these than of grass. Here I thought Deucalion and Pyrrha must have failed to convert stones into people, but continued throwing, even to the tiring of Jupiter's patience. Rolling them down the long steep hill afforded some fine sport for us. Mr. Burroughs told of a very interesting incident in his early life. "I remember," he said, "when I was a young chap I used to roll stones down this hill very often. One day I got a large, round boulder high up the mountain side and turnedit loose with a good push. Those bars down there had just been finished by father and had cost him considerable work and worry. The stone was heavy and was almost a disc, and had gathered considerable momentum as it neared the base of the hill, and ran directly into the bars and literally knocked them to pieces. Perhaps I could not have remembered the incident so well if this had been all, but as a further reminder, father gave me a pretty severe lashing. I remember how out of patience he was at my carelessness."

Passing through these bars we went through the sugar maple bush, that had longer than he could remember, supplied the family with syrup and sugar. The old vat and the furnace were there and the shell of a house to ward off the cold winds of April,

"While smoking Dick doth boil the sap."

I was thinking ofSpring Gladness, andThe Coming of Phoebe,

"When buckets shine 'gainst maple treesAnd drop by drop the sap doth flow,When days are warm, but nights do freeze,And deep in woods lie drifts of snow,When cattle low and fret in stall,Then morning brings the phoebe's call,'Phoebe, Phoebe, Phoebe'."

As we came down to the roadway that leads from the old farm to Woodchuck Lodge, Mr. Burroughspointed out to us a junco's nest just outside the road. This nest had afforded him much pleasure during his present stay up at Roxbury, as he saw it two or four times a day, as he passed by on his way to his brother's home for milk. On the crest of the hill between the two houses—the old home and Woodchuck Lodge—I stopped and looked for several moments at the place of the naturalist's birth, and at the farm, with all the beautiful meadows and pastures, for I knew that I would not see them again soon. When it was told me that all these meadows and woods and stone walls, look now as they did sixty and more years ago, I could understand how a country lad, born and reared among such scenes, could grow into a great naturalist. I could now enjoy and understand some of the qualities of his literary productions. The country was a new one to me and altogether unlike any I had seen, but having tasted of it through the medium of good literature, I was prepared to make the best of my opportunity to study it. What particularly impressed me, and what was so different from the scenes of my childhood, was the buckwheat fields dotting the meadows here and yonder, and the long straight stone fences marking the meadows and hillsides. "These walls were built by a generation of men that had ginger," Mr. Burroughs said, "a quality so much lacking these days."

No words could express the happiness that had come to me during the week that I was rambling through the Catskills. While going down through the meadow in front of Woodchuck Lodge, on my way to the railroad station, I seemed to be flooded with memories of a happy experience. These memories still haunt me and may they continue to do so even unto the end of time. I had learned better than I ever knew, that "this brown, sun-tanned, sin-stained earth is a sister to the morning and the evening star," and that it has more of beauty and love written on it than has ever been read by all the poets in the distant ages past; that there are still left volumes for the interpreter. I had taken a little journey in the divine ship as it sailed over the divine sea. I had heard one talk of the moral of the solar system,—of its harmony, its balance, its compensation, and I thought that there is no deeper lesson to be learned.

A few years ago Herr Brandes, the great French critic, in commenting upon the method of criticism used by Saint Beuve, sounded a pretty harsh note to the old school of critics, on method and material in poetry, which in a measure explains what I am about to say of the poetry of John Burroughs. "At the beginning of the century," he says, "imagination was considered the essential quality in poetry. It was his capacity of invention which made the poet a poet; he was not tied down to nature and reality, but was as much at home in the supernatural as in the actual world. But as romanticism, by degrees, developed into realism, creative literature, by degrees, gave up its fantastic excursions into space.... It exerted itself even more to understand than to invent."

An observer cannot fail to see in modern poetry a tendency to beautify objects of nature, and facts of science. Past ages were taken up with the heroic, the legendary in poetry. Legends were creations of the mind and in turn subjects for all poetic effort. Some moral and spiritual lesson or truth, must be taught by the introduction of ideals drawn purely from imagination. Such anideal was many times created for the special lesson at hand. The Homeric poems, Virgil's Aeneid, Dante's Divine Comedy and Milton's Paradise Lost, are all poems of this character. They are founded on the unknown and the unknowable, yet they bring to us suggestions that inspire us and make us better for having read them. Milton never knew how Paradise was lost, nor even that it ever was lost. Dante did not know the history of the departed soul, nor did Homer and Virgil know what part the gods and heroes played in the fall of the city of Troy, nor has the riddle of the origin of the Latin and Greek races ever been written. Yet such themes give us pleasure when they come from the great poets, who actually believed what they were writing to be true, and the poems themselves will live forever.

We have reached a new order of things in the present era of the world's history, and we must look to something else for poetic inspiration, as well as to interpret the origin of things in the light of the last word on evolution. The minor poets have about worn these old themes threadbare, and the public mind is beginning to look to something else for entertainment. People are now seeking the poetic interpretation of facts of science and of nature, and the poet of the future will have the peculiar task of giving us new eyes with which to see truth, instead of leading us into fields of fancy.

John Burroughs is an interpreter of this latter kind. He has gone to nature with the poet's eye, and has needed no fiction to get us interested in what he is trying to tell us. The facts need only to be seen with the poet's eyes to make them beautiful, and he has translated them in terms of the human soul, without having to create beings of fancy to interest us while he tells the message. This is what differentiates his prose and poetry from the poetry of the past. It is true, he ranges from the commonplace to the sublime, but in it all with unfaltering devotion to truth, which should be the aim of every poet and is the aim of every true poet, despite the claims of some that literature is only to entertain, and should never be taken seriously. If it is not serious, it is not literature, and if it is serious, it will always have, as its entering wedge, some fundamental truth. The whole aim of Burroughs is to lead humanity into the proper method of interpreting the truths of nature, and if all his poetry is not the best, he has sacrificed poetry rather than truth and owns up to it like a man. He says: "My poetry is not the free channel of myself that my prose is. I, myself, do not think that my poetry takes rank with my prose." His best poetry takes rank with his or any body's prose. Replying to some questions with reference toMid-summer in the Catskills, Mr. Burroughs says: "It was an attempt to paint faithfully, characteristic mid-summerscenes of that locality. I do not think it ranks high as poetry, but it is true. The genesis of such a poem, or of any poem, is hidden in the author's subconsciousness." Perched on a mountain top that overlooked the beautiful valleys amid the Catskill mountains, and seeing the many activities of farm life in August, Mr. Burroughs saw the beauty and simplicity of the situation, and could not forego his duty of telling it to the world.

"The strident hum of sickle-bar,Like giant insect heard afar,Is on the air again;I see the mower where he ridesAbove the level grassy tidesThat flood the meadow plain."

From beginning to end the poem paints the rural life amid the Catskills in its busiest season, and associates with it all the best in Nature. It is literally a poet's vision of his own country, after many years absence from the fields he paints. How many times he himself has gone.

"Above the level grassy tides,That flood the meadow plain,"

but perhaps without seeing the beauty that the scene now brings to him.

ON THE SUMMIT OF THE OLD CLUMP, LOOKING IN THE VALLEY BELOW "WHERE SWEATING FORMS AND BRONZED ARMS REAP IN THE LAND'S INCREASE"

Far different from this is his first poetry, which is the expression of a youth groping in the dark for some unknown god, with his only guide that of faith in the world, faith in himself and faith in his fellowman. He says of his early poem: "Waiting was written in 1862, during a rather gloomy and doubtful period of my life. I was poor, was in doubt as to my career, did not seem to be able to get hold of myself, nor to bring myself to bear upon the problems before me. Yet underneath all was this abiding faith that I should get what belonged to me; that sooner or later I should find my own. The poem was first printed in the old Knickerbocker Magazine of New York, in the fall of 1862. I received nothing for it. I builded better than I knew. It has proved a true prophesy of my life."

"Serene I fold my hands and wait,Nor care for wind, nor tide, nor sea;I rave no more 'gainst Time or Fate,For lo! my own shall come to me."I stay my haste, I make delays,For what avails this eager pace?I stand amid the eternal ways,And what is mine shall know my face."Asleep, awake, by night or day,The friends I seek are seeking me;No wind can drive my bark astray,Nor change the tide of destiny."What matter if I stand alone?I wait with joy the coming years;My heart shall reap where it hath sown,And garner up its fruits of tears."The waters know their own, and drawThe brook that springs in yonder heights;So flows the good with equal lawUnto the soul of pure delights."The stars come nightly to the sky;The tidal wave unto the sea;Nor time, nor space, nor deep, nor high,Can keep my own away from me."

"Serene I fold my hands and wait,Nor care for wind, nor tide, nor sea;I rave no more 'gainst Time or Fate,For lo! my own shall come to me.

"I stay my haste, I make delays,For what avails this eager pace?I stand amid the eternal ways,And what is mine shall know my face.

"Asleep, awake, by night or day,The friends I seek are seeking me;No wind can drive my bark astray,Nor change the tide of destiny.

"What matter if I stand alone?I wait with joy the coming years;My heart shall reap where it hath sown,And garner up its fruits of tears.

"The waters know their own, and drawThe brook that springs in yonder heights;So flows the good with equal lawUnto the soul of pure delights.

"The stars come nightly to the sky;The tidal wave unto the sea;Nor time, nor space, nor deep, nor high,Can keep my own away from me."

It is this willingness to wait the results of his efforts without fretting or worrying, to which Mr. Burroughs owes his success. This I think, is what has toned and sweetened his prose and poetry, and makes him so readable. He looks for truth and finds it, and lets it ripen into expression in his mind, and we get the good after the smelting process has completed its work, and the dross all worked off. The above poem has been a true prophesy of his life. His own has come to him, and he is now experiencing the richest reward for his long years of waiting and patience. Iftoo much success comes to us in the beginning of any career, the career is most likely to suffer, or possibly better, we are likely to develop a little vain glory and never return to the proper attitude to truth and service. Mr. Burroughs in his plain simple way has been 'still achieving, still pursuing,' and has long since learned 'to labor and to wait.' His attitude toward his work is almost as pleasant as the work itself. Never in a hurry—though he always manages to get much done. The melancholy days have been 'few and far between' with him, though we do see some few sad but wholesome lines in his poetry. These almost sound like some homesick visitor in a foreign land. The following from the poem, "In Blooming Orchards," is a good illustration of this:

"My thoughts go homeward with the bees;I dream of youth and happier days—Of orchards where amid the treesI loitered free from time's decrees,And loved the birds and learned their ways."Oh, orchard thoughts and orchard sighs,Ye, too, are born of life's regrets!The apple bloom I see with eyesThat have grown sad in growing wise,Through Mays that manhood ne'er forgets."

"My thoughts go homeward with the bees;I dream of youth and happier days—Of orchards where amid the treesI loitered free from time's decrees,And loved the birds and learned their ways.

"Oh, orchard thoughts and orchard sighs,Ye, too, are born of life's regrets!The apple bloom I see with eyesThat have grown sad in growing wise,Through Mays that manhood ne'er forgets."

"The Return" is another of his poems in which this longing for the days of his youth crops out:

"O sad, sad hills! O cold, cold hearth!In sorrow he learned this truth—One may go back to the place of his birth,He cannot go back to his youth."

Again in "Snow Birds" he says:

"Thy voice brings back dear boyhood daysWhen we were gay together."

His contact with out-door life and his habits of observation are unmistakably those of a poet. "In the rugged trail through the woods or along the beach we shall now and then get a whiff of natural air, or a glimpse of something to

"Make the wild blood startIn its mystic springs."

Burroughs says himself, 'the very idea of a bird is a symbol and a suggestion to the poet. How many suggestions to the poet in their flight and song! Indeed, is not the bird the original type and teacher of the poet, and do we not demand of the human thrush or lark that he shake out his carols in the same free manner as his winged prototype?... The bestlyric pieces, how like they are to certain bird-songs!—clear, ringing, ecstatic, and suggesting that challenge and triumph which the outpouring of the male bird contains.' Again he says 'Keats and Shelly have pre-eminently the sharp semi-tones of the sparrows and larks.'

But what shall we say of Burroughs? His poetry is somewhat matter-of-fact, like the songs of the Indigo bunting and the Thrushes, and we cannot help but feel that the songs of these birds had the effect on him that Burns speaks of in one of his letters: "I never hear the loud, solitary whistle of the curlew in a summer noon, or the wild, mixing cadence of a troop of gray plovers in an autumnal morning, without feeling an elevation of the soul like the enthusiasm of devotion or poetry." Verily he has achieved his purpose. 'He has brought home the bough with the bird he heard singing upon it. His verse is full of the spirit of the woods and fields; the winds of heaven blow through it; there is the rustle of leaves, the glint of sunlight; the voices of the feathered folk are present. One finds himself in touch with out-doors in every line.' O, what a blessing when one can drink from the great fountain of Nature! When one can be so inured with the larger and more wholesome truths of the universe that he forgets to fret and to make records of the negative forces of the world! This we claim is pre-eminently true of Burroughs. He tells truths aboutNature in his simple, musical verse, and almost vindicates Wordsworth's definition of poetry: "The breath and finer spirit of all knowledge," or "The impassioned expression which is in the countenance of all science." I would almost say of him what Dryden said of Chaucer: "He is a perpetual fountain of good sense." Perhaps Mr. Dowden, in speaking of Coleridge's poetry, comes nearer than any one else to the truth about Burroughs' poetry. "These poems contemplate and describe Nature in a resting and meditative temper. There is no passionate feeling in their delight. The joy he has in the beauty of the world is the joy of dreaming, often only a recollected joy in what he has seen. He found in poetry, paths of his imagination. The pensiveness, the dying fall, the self-loving melancholy, are harmonized by him with Nature." Thoreau says in one of his books: "Very few men can speak of Nature with any truth. They overstep her modesty somehow or other, and confer no favor." The richest flavor in the poetry of John Burroughs is the flavor of truth, and 'beauty is truth, truth beauty.' Unlike Thoreau, he never forgets his fellowmen, nor has he ever failed to find beauty in man as well as in Nature.

"He sees the mower where he ridesAbove the level grassy tidesThat flood the meadow plain,"

and writes a poem. He dislikes the conventional in man no less than he dislikes the conventional in poetry, but man unaffected is as beautiful as the Nature that surrounds him.

A few years ago when Mr. E. H. Harriman took a number of friends to Alaska on what was known as The Harriman Alaska Expedition, John Burroughs was selected as a purely literary man to write a narrative of the Expedition. In addition to the story of the trip, Mr. Burroughs was so inspired with the new scenery of those Borean Hills that the muse seized him and the result was three of his best poems:To the Oregon Robin,To the Golden Crown Sparrow of Alaska, andTo the Lapland Longspur. Since that trip in 1899, he has written no verse, I believe, exceptThe Return. Before then he was an irregular contributor of poetry to the current magazines since the appearance ofWaiting, in 1862. He says now that he does not seem to be in a mood for poetry, but that he may find his muse again some day. The total number of his poems in print amounts to only thirty-five and none of them are lengthy. The longest of all is his very life which is to me one continuous poem. His verses are only sparks from the life in which they grew, and never rise to the height of the fountain head.

Perhaps one way to test a poet is to measure him by the number of single line poems that canbe found in his poetry; lines that make the real poem of a number of verses. Pope thought that a long poem was a contradiction of terms, and we certainly know many references in the poets to suggestive lines that are almost poems in themselves. Wordsworth'sSolitary Reapercontains one or two passages of this kind.

"Perhaps the plaintive numbers flowFor old, unhappy, far-off things,And battles long ago."

or the following from theOde:

"Our noisy years seem moments in the beingOf the eternal Silence."

Another of his most exquisite lines is,

"And the stars move along the edges of the hills."

Walter Pater finds in Wordsworth's poetry an extraordinary number of these short passage poems, which he called 'delicious morsels.' Coleridge says of Wordsworth: "Since Milton, I know of no poet with so many felicitous and unforgetable lines." Many critics have found these suggestive lines in the poets, and I find Wordsworth full of them. The lines of this kind that I find in the poetry of John Burroughs are rather numerous for the amount of poetry he gave to the world, and some of them are as fine as the language has.

"Like mellow thunder leagues away,""I hear the wild bee's mellow chord,In airs that swim above,""Once more the tranquil days brood o'er the hills,And sooth earth's toiling breast,""The dome of day o'erbrims with soundFrom humming wings on errands bound,""Pausing in the twilight dim,Hear him lift his evening hymn,""Again from out the garden hivesThe exodus of frenzied bees;The humming cyclone onward drives,Or finds repose amid the trees.""Then waiting long hath recompense,And all the world is glad with May."

"Like mellow thunder leagues away,"

"I hear the wild bee's mellow chord,In airs that swim above,"

"Once more the tranquil days brood o'er the hills,And sooth earth's toiling breast,"

"The dome of day o'erbrims with soundFrom humming wings on errands bound,"

"Pausing in the twilight dim,Hear him lift his evening hymn,"

"Again from out the garden hivesThe exodus of frenzied bees;The humming cyclone onward drives,Or finds repose amid the trees."

"Then waiting long hath recompense,And all the world is glad with May."

"Oh, skater in the fields of air," he says of theswallow. How well this expresses the flight of the swallow!

"The robin perched on treetop tallHeavenward lifts his evening call.""Forth from the hive go voyaging bees,Cruising far each sunny hour."

"The robin perched on treetop tallHeavenward lifts his evening call."

"Forth from the hive go voyaging bees,Cruising far each sunny hour."

There are many passages of this kind in his poems and they express the moods of Nature, perhaps as well as it is possible for them to be put in words. InArbutus Days, he uses the following figure to paint a spring day:

"Like mother bird upon her nestThe day broods o'er the earth."

To him the common things are all beautiful and if we only have the eyes to see with, they are made beautiful for us by him. Recognizing the fate of every insincere book, he declares: "Only an honest book can live; only absolute sincerity can stand the test of time. Any selfish or secondary motive vitiates a work of art, as it vitiates a religious life. Indeed, I doubt if we fully appreciate the literary value of staple, fundamental human virtues and qualities—probity, directness, simplicity, sincerity, love." He is probably not an inspired poet, but I shall claim for him that heis an honest singer, a sincere interpreter of Nature, and every virtue referred to in the above quotation he has woven intoBird and Bough. What he says of another we can appropriately say of him: "This poet sees the earth as one of the orbs, and has sought to adjust his imagination to the modern problems and conditions, always taking care, however, to preserve an outlook into the highest regions."

LOOKING ACROSS THE PASTURE WALL IN THE DIRECTION OF THE NATHAN CHASE FARM

A certain publisher, who honored very much Walt Whitman, could have paid him no higher tribute than to have closed the preface to Whitman's Poems as follows: "To have met Whitman was a privilege, to have been his friend was an honor. The latter was mine; and among the many reminiscences of my life, none are to me more pleasing than those which gather about the name of 'The Good Grey Poet'."

John Burroughs was for thirty years the intimate friend and constant associate of Walt Whitman, and I have heard him say that those were among the most pleasant years of his life. All who ever knew Whitman, and became in any way intimate with him, have practically the same to say of him. No writer ever unfolded himself and his greatness more completely than Whitman, and yet we have a great many excellent critics who are pretty harsh on him. This we believe is so, because the critics have not read the poet aright. They have failed to get out of the poems what was put in them. Whitman is not a poet according to classical standards, but as a "Creator" he is.

Emerson says of his poetry: "I find it the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed." Julian Hawthorne says of it: "Original and forceful, Whitman cannot be judged by ordinary literary standards. His scornful trampling upon all metrical rules, and his freedom in treating of matters, usually passed in silence, have so far been a decided barrier to the approval of his work."

Professor Underwood of the California University has the following good word for the poet: "Pupils who are accustomed to associate the idea of poetry with regular classic measure in rhyme, or in ten-syllabled blank verse or elastic hexameter, will commence these short and simple prose sentences with surprise, and will wonder how any number of them can form a poem. But let them read aloud with a mind in sympathy with the picture as it is displayed, and they will find by Nature's unmistakable response, that the author is a poet, and possesses the poets' incommunicable power to touch the heart."

Professor Pattee of the Pennsylvania State College, on the other hand says: "It is certainly true that to the majority of readers, 'Leaves of Grass', contains a few good things amid a disgusting mass of rubbish.

"Whitman is confessedly the poet of the body. His book is not upward. He grovels in the earthly and disgusting parts of human life and experience. His egotism is remarkable.

"All the great poets have looked away from their disgusting surroundings and fleshly fetters, into a world of their creation that was bright and ethereal, but Whitman cries: 'I am satisfied with the perishable and the casual.' This alone would debar him from the company of the great masters of song."

Professor Newcomer of Stanford University, divides honors by offending and defending:

First: "It deliberately violates the rules of art, and unless we admit that our rules are idle, we must admit Whitman's defects."

Second: "It is diffuse, prolix."

Third: "This is perhaps the most that can be charged—he was needlessly gross."

Fourth: "The innovations in his vocabulary are inexcusable."

In the following, he as faithfully defends the poet.

First: Of the charged egotism: "It was not to parade himself as an exceptional being, but rather as an average man to hold the mirror up to other men and declare his kinship with them."

Second: "Taking Whitman simply at his own valuation we get much. The joys of free fellowship, the love of comrades, none has sung more heartily or worthily. And his courage and optimism are as deep as Emerson's."

Third: "He became the truest laureate of the war, and of Lincoln the idol of the people."

Fourth: "Comerado this is no book. Who touches this touches a man! As such, therefore, the book must go down to posterity, not a perfect song, but a cry vibrant still with the feeling of the man who uttered it."

Professor Newcomer closes his estimate by the declaration that Whitman stands for the American people, but not in the sense that Washington or Lincoln or Lowell does, and that his office was somewhat like one who stands by and cheers while the procession goes by. He thinks that Whitman did not sit in the seats of the mighty.

Charles W. Hubner is much more charitable and in fact just, with our poet of the body. He says: "Proclaiming the sanctity of manhood and womanhood, the power and eminence of God within us and without us; the divine relationship of body and soul; the eternalness of spirit and matter, he aims to teach us that all of these are manifestations of the Almighty spirit, present within and without all things, and out of whom all created things have come." How far this critic removes Whitman from the class of those who stood by and cheered while the procession moved on! Hubner makes him areal teacherand revealer of divine laws and eternal truth.

Joel Chandler Harris has also given a vivid picture and a most wholesome interpretation of Whitman: "In order to appreciate Whitman's poetry and his purpose, it is necessary to possessthe intuition that enables the mind to grasp in instant and express admiration, the vast group of facts that make man—that make liberty—that make America. There is no poetry in the details; it is all in the broad, sweeping, comprehensive assimilation of the mighty forces behind them—the inevitable, unaccountable, irresistible forward movement of man in the making of the republic." These estimates pro and con could be multiplied indefinitely.

How much more beautiful it is to face this new force in American poetry and deal with it justly, than to stand off and bark like some of our lesser critics have done and are doing! A recent comment upon Whitman says he has come to stay, and we must make up our minds to study him and to dispose of him by getting in sympathy with him, rather than by decrying him. This seems the just way, and the only safe way to deal with any great original force in literature.

John Burroughs has undoubtedly interpreted Whitman better than any other critic, and unquestionably owes Whitman more than any one else. He has found in the poet what so many others have found in Burroughs. "Whitman does not to me suggest the wild and unkempt, as he seems to do to many; he suggests the cosmic and the elemental.... He cherished the hope that he had put into his 'Leaves', some of the tonic and fortifying quality of Nature inher more grand and primitive aspects." From Whitman, I am constrained to believe, Burroughs has drawn much of his primitive strength as a writer. Whitman opened the book of Nature to him, and led him into a certain wilderness of beauty. At twenty, Burroughs began to read Whitman's poems, and says of them: "I was attracted by the new poet's work from the first. It seemed to let me into a larger, freer air than I found in the current poetry.... Not a poet of dells and fells, but of the earth and the orbs." He knew that he had found in Whitman a very strong and imposing figure, but he was doubly reassured when he came upon the statement from the English critic, John Addington Symonds, that Whitman had influenced him more than any other book except the Bible,—more than Plato, more than Goethe.

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