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“This guest of summer,
The temple-haunting martlet, does
approve,
By his loved masonry that the
heaven’s breath
Smells wooingly here: no jutty, frieze.
Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but
this bird
Hath made his pendent bed and
procreant cradle:
Where they most breed and haunt,
I have observed,
The air is delicate.”

Nature is of course universal, but in the same sense is she local and particular,–cuts every suit to fit the wearer, gives every land an earth and sky of its own, and a flora and fauna to match. The poets and their readers delight in local touches. We have both the hare and the rabbit in America, but this line from Thomson’s description of a summer morning,–

“And from the bladed field the fearful
hare limps awkward,”–

or this from Beattie,–

“Through rustling corn the hare
astonished sprang”–

would not apply with the same force in New England, because our hare is never found in the fields, but in dense, remote woods. In England both hares and rabbits abound to such an extent that in places the fields and meadows swarm with them, and the ground is undermined by their burrows, till they become a serious pest to the farmer, and are trapped in vast numbers. The same remark applies to this from Tennyson:–

“From the woods
Came voices of the well-contented
doves.”

Doves and wood-pigeons are almost as abundant in England as hares and rabbits, and are also a serious annoyance to the farmer; while in this country the dove and pigeon are much less marked and permanent features in our rural scenery,–less permanent, except in the case of the mourning dove, which is found here and there the season through; and less marked, except when the hordes of the passenger pigeon once in a decade or two invade the land, rarely tarrying longer than the bands of a foraging army. I hardly know what Trowbridge means by the “wood-pigeon” in his midsummer poem, for, strictly speaking, the wood-pigeon is a European bird, and a very common one in England. But let me say here, however, that Trowbridge, as a rule, keeps very close to the natural history of his own country when he has occasion to draw material from this source, and to American nature generally. You will find in his poems the wood pewee, the bluebird, the oriole, the robin, the grouse, the kingfisher, the chipmunk, the mink, the bobolink, the wood thrush, all in their proper places. There are few bird-poems that combine so much good poetry and good natural history as his “Pewee.” Here we have a glimpse of the catbird:–

“In the alders, dank with noonday
dews,
The restless catbird darts and mews;”

here, of the cliff swallow: –

“In the autumn, when the hollows
All are filled with flying leaves
And the colonies of swallows
Quit the quaintly stuccoed eaves.”

Only the dates are not quite right. The swallows leave their nests in July, which is nearly three months before the leaves fall. The poet is also a little unfaithful to the lore of his boyhood when he says

“The partridge beats his throbbing drum”

in midsummer. As a rule, the partridge does not drum later than June, except fitfully during the Indian summer, while April and May are his favorite months. And let me say here, for the benefit of the poets who do not go to the woods, that the partridge does not always drum upon a log; he frequently drums upon a rock or a stone wall, if a suitable log be not handy, and no ear can detect the difference. His drum is really his own proud breast, and beneath his small hollow wings gives forth the same low, mellow thunder from a rock as from a log. Bryant has recognized this fact in one of his poems.