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2. Poems in the Book of Cage Birds.
In Hirst's Book of Cage Birds there are two poems of his which he did not include in The Coming of the Mammoth. The first one is “To the Whidah-bird”, which was reprinted in the Ladies’ Companion for March, 1844,(15) with some changes. There are three stanzas, of twelve lines each, of which we quote the first: —
“Bird of the dark and glancing wing!
Whose home is Afric's burning strand,
With solemn accents sorrowing,
Why mourn'st thou for thy native land?
And why with cadence sad and low,
And look, the heraldry of woe,
Where others sit in merry mood,
Dost thou alone with drooping plume,
And flutt’ring wing, in sorrow brood,
And wail so deep thy settled doom?
Poor widowed thing! I pity thee
Thus early mate to misery.”(16)
In the magazine the first line reads: —
“Bird of the ebon-tinted wing!”
which is less effective than the first version, and in the ninth line there is “down-dropt wing”, in place of the former “flutt’ring wing”. It is significant that he enclosed the words, “the heraldry of woe”, in parentheses in this revision, and placed an exclamation point after them, thus using again that mannerism of Poe's which he had already used in “Ligeia”.
The second of these poems, “To the Indigo Finch”, is far better, and is given in the book with some prefatory remarks, as follows:(17) [page 62:]
“On one occasion, on a moonlight night in June, while seated at the door of a friend's country residence, enjoying at the same time the cool breeze and the delight of a ‘Davenport Regalia’ cigar, I was particularly struck with the song of one of these birds, who sat on the highest one of an adjacent clump of trees. At the moment I penned the following effusion, which may give some idea of the sweetness of his strain in the lonely hours of night.
“To the Indigo Finch.
'Tis the deep silence of a summer night,
A night in June. How solemn seems the scene,
The wood is hushed in slumber, while the trees
'Tween whose shut leaves the night wind playful steals,
Kissing them into music, sadly breathe
A mournful requiem o'er the vanished day.
The brook, that through the meadow gleaming creeps
And 'neath the wood, low ripples twixt the moss
Which interwoven lines its shelving sides,
Or pattering o’er the pebbles in its bed,
Hath changed its cadence to a lower tone,
More fitting to the hour.
The flowers have closed their petals and bowed down
Their bells in slumber — and the wide-spread fields
Lay like a burial-place of by-gone dead.
Hark! some sweet strain,
In mellow cadence, on the ear of night
Falls like a Lullaby. Whence comes the song
And what doth give it life?
Again, 'tis here!
Some elfin lover tunes his golden lute,
And, 'neath the beamings of the love-sick moon,
Soft woos his fav'rite fay.
More loud it swells,
While echo, wakened from her dreamless sleep,
Flings back in ecsta-sy the silvery lay; —
'Tis past and all is still.
Oh! once again
Delight with me thy strain, which, like the lutes,
Swept by the fingers of the heedless wind,
Gives forth strange music. Vain I gaze around,
Yet naught I see! But now from yon tall beech,
Whose coronal of leaves is high, in air,
Flitting betwixt me and the azure sky,
A form fast flies. Ah! sylvan one! 'twas thou
Who charmed me all unknowing.
He has gone
To his lone mate, and by her gentle side
Now rests in slumber.
Peace be with thee, bird!” [page 63:]
This is blank verse, an unusual form for Hirst, and a welcome relief to us from his trite and often forced rhymes.
The lines —
“Some elfin lover tunes his golden lute,
And, ‘neath the beamings of the love-sick moon
Soft woos his fav’rite fay” —
are a charming bit of romanticism.
There is much less of realistic description in these poems about birds than one would expect from such an ornithologist as Hirst.
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 61:]
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Notes:
None.
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[S:0 - LWHBHP, 1925] - Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - Bookshelf - The Life and Writings of Henry Beck Hirst of Philadelphia (Watts)