2 Vainly the fowler's eye Might mark tny distant flight to do thee wrong, As, darkly painted or the crimson sky, Thy figure floats along. 3 Seek'st thou the plashy brink Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide, 4 There is a Power whose care Teaches thy way along that pathless coast,- Lone wandering, but not lost. 5 All day thy wings have fanned, At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere, 6 And soon that toil shall end. Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bend, Soon, o'er thy sheltering nest. Thou'rt gone, the abyss of heaven Hath swallowed up thy form; yet, on my heart 8 He who, from zone to zone, Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, In the long way that I must tread alone, Will lead my steps aright. -William Cullen Bryant. Last steps of day-evening. The second stanza simply means that the bird is too high for a hunter to shoot. Plashy-watery; marge-margin. Notice the striking contrast in the pictures presented in stanzas five and six. In the former the bird is wandering in a cold northern night; in the latter she is on her sheltered nest in the warm south. Explain the migration of birds. Have you ever seen flocks of wild fowls? The essence of the poem is found in the closing stanza. The emotion out of which the poem grew and which it in turn arouses is, of course, trust. "Poetry is the suggestion by the imagination of noble grounds for noble emotions." This poem illustrates the definition very well. Read Whittier's The Eternal Goodness. THE SANDPIPER This beautiful little poem is not easily comprehended by one who has little or no knowledge of the seashore. The author of it lived nearly all of her life on one of the Isles of Shoals off the coast of New Hampshire. In reading it the inland student must use his imagination and picture clearly in his mind the scene described. He must create for himself, from pictures and descriptions, the scene which he has never beheld. Imagine a little girl on the sandy ocean beach gathering the dry drift-wood for fuel, as a storm comes on. Running up and down the beach is a slender, longlegged bird similar to those that flit along some of our inland streams. The lighthouses are wrapt in the mists of the storm, and the ships have taken in their sails and are hurrying away to the harbor or to the deep open sea. It is a vivid picture, drawn with a few simple lines, of a rising storm on the seashore. THE SANDPIPER 1 Across the narrow beach we flit, One little sandpiper and I; And fast I gather, bit by bit, The scattered driftwood, bleached and dry. The wild waves reach their hands for it, The wild wind raves, the tide runs high, As up and down the beach we flit, One little sandpiper and I. 2 Above our heads the sullen clouds 3 I watch him as he skims along Uttering his sweet and mournful cry; He starts not at my fitful song, Or flash of fluttering drapery. He has no thought of any wrong; He scans me with a fearless eye. Stanch friends are we, well-tried and strong, The little sandpiper and I. 4 Comrade, where wilt thou be to-night, I do not fear for thee, though wroth Thou, little sandpiper, and I? -Celia Thaxter. Those who have seen only coal or gas used as fuel will need to have the drift-wood, as fuel, explained to them. The wild waves reach their hands for it. What does this sentence mean? The tide runs high. Here is an opportunity to study, most effectively, the tides, and so combine reading and geography. Just before a storm the sandpiper runs up and down the beach in the manner described in the poem. This is one of the signs of the coming storm. Before the second stanza is read, be sure that you have a clear mental picture of the sullen clouds as they scud black and swift across the sky. Have you ever watched a storm come up? Describe it. Explain sullen as used here, and scud. The third and fourth lines in stanza two make a striking picture. Miss Thaxter's father was for many years a lighthouse keeper on the Isles of Shoals. Show or draw a picture of a lighthouse and explain what lighthouses are for. The third stanza indicates that the girl and the bird have been together so often and so much on the beach that they have come to know each other and to be friends. Comrade. Why does she call the bird comrade? Are not the birds our little brothers of the field and the air? One who has ever loved a bird will give the word comrade a new meaning when he reads it here if it is explained to him. The closing stanza is beautiful, both in the picture it presents and in the moral it teaches-the same moral that Bryant teaches in Lines to a Water-fowl. |