Daily globe. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1878-1884, 1879-03-02
POetical IcOnOclasm.

Scottish poets of inferior note constant
~ speak of the nightingale-as some do
OF the modern American versliers, who
re-echo the biemlshes as we'll as the beau
ties OF English song, though neither
nightingale nor lark was ever heard on
the American continent. Even Mr.. Long
fellow, who is wiser in this respect than
many Of his ceuntrymen, speaks of "swal-
lows singing down each wind that blows
Swallows may twliter or chirp, hut they
cannot sing any more than sparrow.
Coleridge, who lived long enough in
town to forget the country, says in his
beautiful poem Of "Christabel:N
Ills month before the month OF May,
The night is chill, the forest bare
There is not wind enough to twirl
The one red leaf, the last of its clan,
That DANES as often as dance it can,
Hanging so light and hanging so high
On the topmost twig that looks up to tn
sky"
A month before the month Of Nav" is,
clearly. the month of April, at which
time the forest Is no longer "bare," as
the poet describes, but has put forth
either the tender green leaflets of the
spring Or the early buds, which have
pushed away all The verdure of the prev
lous year, ard left no red leaf Of the long
past Autumn TO tremble in the breeze.
DR.. Blackjack, of Edinburgh, one of the
earl y friends of Burns, and who was con-
splcuousiy instrumental in bringing the
genius OF that great and unfortunate poet
to the notice Of the literary and aristo-
cratic society Of the Scottish capital--a
man who could judge of poetry much
better than he could write it, bvn
means uncommon case--Was the author Of
a once much admired song, entitled
"Absence." In this composition he says:
'Ye harvests that wave in the breeze
AS far as the view can extend,
Ye mountains outrageous with trees,
Whose tops SO majestic ascend,
Yon landscape, what joy to survey,
Were Marg'ret with me to admire
Then the harvest would glitter, how gay!
How majestic the mountains aspire"
This poor gentleman was blind, or pos.
sibly he would have though twice before
he celebrated the 'umbrageous trees'' of
the aspiring mountains of Scotland. His
blindness must be pleaded in excuse for
his incorrectness as word painter; but a
very townbred poet, the late Thomas
Haynes Bailey. the author of many hun
dreds o1mediocre songs-popular in their
dav-had, at all events, his eyesight, and
could not, like DR.. Blackjack, urge in
extenuation of his inaccuracies, that he
could not see. One of his songs, that
took the unripe fancy of our grandfath-
ers and grandmothers IN the days when
they were young and foolish, expressed
his desire to be a butterfly:
I'D be a butterfly, born in bower
Where roses and lilies and violets meet
But butterflies are not born in bowers
whether roses and lilies meet there OF
not; for truth compe}s the admission that
they are born in cabbages, and that ia
their youthful state as catterpillars-b be-
fore they have attained to the dignity Of
wings-they commit very serious depre.
dations on those useful vegetables, as
every gardener knows to his sorrow. MOI
is the poet,if poet he be,which is doubt
full, more correct when he says that the
butterfly,
"Sportive and airy,
Sleeps in rose when the nightingale sings.
Butterflies do not sleep in the roses, o.
in the petals of any other flower, or il
other unsheltered places, but take refuge
in hooks and crannies, instinctively
afraid of the nightingale, who would bt
very likely to make meal of them i
they came within his sphere Of vision.-
AW the Year Bound.