teachyoung

"His Comrade in My Heart" by Susan E. Kennedy

In what better way may the young be taught to reverence the Creator and to love that which He has created, than by teaching them that they are one with all that He has made? It is a pity that we had not all been taught by old Nokomis. If, like little Hiawatha, we had

"Learned of every bird its language,
Learned their names and all their secrets,
How they built their nests in summer,
Where they hid themselves in winter,
Talked with them whene'er we met them,"

we might perhaps be better able to enter in the spirit of the following sentiment, which, by the way, it is not too late to place before the young in our charge:

"The song-birds might all have brooded and hatched in the human heart.
They are typical of its highest aspirations and nearly the whole gamut of
human passion and emotion is expressed more or less fully in their varied songs."

Let us listen to what a few of our birdlovers say of some of our sweet musicians:

"Among our own birds there is the song of the hermit-thrush for devoutness and religious serenity, that of the wood-thrush for the musing, melodious thoughts of twilight, the song-sparrows for simple faith and trust, the bob-o-links for hilarity and glee, the mourning doves for hopeless sorrow, the vireos for all-day and every-day contentment, and the nocturne of the mocking-bird for love. There are the plaintive singers, the soaring, ecstatic singers, the confident singers, the gushing and voluble singers, and the halt-voiced inarticulate singers. The note of the pewee is a human sigh, and the chickadee has a voice full of unspeakable tenderness and fidelity. There is pride in the song of the tanager, and vanity in that of the cat-bird. There is something distinctly human about the robin; his is the note of boyhood.

"I have thoughts that follow the migratory fowls northward and southward, and that go with the sea-birds into the desert of the ocean as lonely and tireless as they. I sympathize with the watchful crow perched younder on that tree, or walking about the field. I hurry out of doors when I hear the clarion of the wild gander; his comrade in my heart sends back the call."

The man who writes so sympathetically is the nature lover, John Burroughs, of whom some one has said: "What may not the voices of Nature say to such a man and be understood?" Of the bluebird, that "winged lute", he writes:

"When Nature made the bluebird she wished to propitiate both the sky and the earth, so she gave him the color of the one on his back and the hue of the other on his breast, and ordained that his appearance in spring should denote that the strife and war between the two elements had ceased. He is the peace harbinger; in him the celestial and the terrestrial strike hands and are fast friends. He means the furrow and he means the warmth; he means all the soft, wooing influences of spring on the one hand and the retreating footsteps of winter on the other."

"Never was sweeter music--
Sunshine turned into song,
To set us dreaming of summer,
When the days and the dreams are long.

"Winged lute that we call a bluebird,
You blend in a silver strain
The sound of the laughing waters,
The patter of spring's sweet rain.

"The voice of the wind, the sunshine,
And fragrance of blossoming things,
Ah! you are a poem of April,
That God endowed with wings."

And so Even E. Rexford is another lover of the bluebird, as indeed, who is not? But John Burroughs says that "this bird seems incapable of uttering a harsh note, or of doing a spiteful, ill-tempered thing." Why, then, should we not love it? Is not amiability a passport to favor in the bird as well as in the human world?

"The bluebird enjoys the pre-eminence of being the first bit of color that cheers our northern landscape. The other birds that arrive about the same time-- the sparrow, the robin, the phoebe bird -- are clad in neutral tints, gray, brown, or russet; but the bluebird brings one of the primary hues and divinest of them all."

Some one says of Mr. Burroughs' writings:

"If I mistake not, much of the charm of what he writes is the result of personal familiarity with birds, his tendency to write definitely and always sympathetically of some one bird. And then, too, Mr. Burroughs has the poet's appreciation of the beautiful in the abstract. He knows birds as individuals; he also knows them as spiritual expression, and his appreciation of their moods and temperaments prompts some of his most beautiful passages.

"Among civilized people the most cheerful and happy, if possessed of a benevolent heart ... who have acquired by habit and education the power of deriving pleasure from the objects that lie immediately about them. But these sources of happiness are open to those who are endowed with sensibility and who have received a favorable intellectual training."

And this is the reason why I am making these extracts. I want to bring to the notice of those who have the care of the young that upon them - the trainers - depends in a great measure the future of these same young people. It is doubtless true that some are better endowed than others with the gift of sensibility, that some are, as Wilson Flagg suggests, "persons of superior and peculiar refinement of mind," but, as the same author asserts, more depends upon training than heredity. How much, then, of future enjoyment, not to say usefulness, is dependent upon the environment of youth. One who is highly gifted by Nature might, perhaps, become a keen observer and an ardent lover of bird, bee, or blossom, as the interest might turn; but, fortunately, or unfortunately as the case may be, the majority of the human race are born just ordinary individuals, and need pushing or directing. A few may of themselves recognize the voice of "his comrade in my heart," but the common people need to be taught to listen.

Everything which nature teaches is on the refinement side of life, not to say the safe side. Hear what Mr. Flagg says:

"In proportion as we have been trained to be agreeably affected by the outward forms of nature and the sounds that proceed from animate andinanimate world, are we capable of being happy without resorting to vulgar and costly recreations."

I am convinced that there can scarcely be too much said upon this subject; that educators and parents may well turn much of their attention to the business of teaching the young to listen to Nature's voices. Who would not become heart-poets like some to whom we listen almost with reverence while they speak of the most common, every-day matters? To be sure we must not expect of much of ourselves. All may not become such as they in expression; but what hinders any from opening the inward ear, that all harmonious sounds may be as music?

Susan E. Kennedy, Moosup Valley, R.I.

From an old bird book by Chester Reed belonging to Mr. Blackshaw.

Posted on BIRDCHAT, March 20, 1998 by:
Kenneth T. Blackshaw
Scientia Enterprises
Nantucket, Mass.
ezky87a@prodigy.com
Amateur Radio - W1NQT

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