206. Song of Birds

Song of Birds

Psa_104:12 : ’93By them shall the fowls of the heaven have their habitation, which sing among the branches.’94

There is an important and improving subject to which most people have given no thought, and concerning which pulpits rarely make allusion, namely, the Song of Birds. If all that has been written concerning music by human voice or about music sounded on instrument by ringer or breath were put together, volume by the side of volume, it would fill a hundred alcoves of the national libraries. But about the song of birds there is as much silence as though, a thousand years ago, the last lark had, with his wing, swept the door-latch of heaven, and as though never a whip-poor-will had sung its lullaby to a slumbering forest at nightfall. We give a passing smile to the call of a bobolink or the chirp of a canary, but about the origin, about the fibre, about the meaning, about the mirth, about the pathos, about the inspiration, about the religion in the song of birds, the most of us are either ignorant or indifferent. A caveat I this morning file in the High Court of Heaven against that almost universal irreligion. We ought to realize that the first Bible that God ever wrote, and long before the Old Testament and the New Testament, was the Book of Nature.

First, I remark that which will surprise many, that the song of birds is a regulated and systematic song, capable of being written out in note and staff and bar and clef, as much as anything that Wagner or Schumann or Handel ever put on paper. As we pass the grove where the flocks are holding matin or vesper service, we are apt to think that the sounds are extemporized, the rising or falling tone is a mere accident, it is flung up and down by haphazard, the bird did not know what it was doing, it did not care whether it was a long metre psalm or a madrigal. What a mistake! The musician never put on the music rack before him Mendelssohn’92s ’93Elijah’94 or Beethoven’92s ’93Concerto in G’94 or Spohr’92s ’93B flat Symphony’94 with more definite idea as to what he was doing than every bird that can sing at all confines himself to accurate and predetermined rendering. The oratorios, the chants, the carols, the overtures, the interludes, the ballads, the canticles, that this morning were heard or will this evening be heard in the forest, have rolled down through the ages without a variation. Even the chipmunk’92s song was ordained clear back in the eternities. At the gates of Paradise it sang in sounds like the syllables ’93Kuk! Kuk! Kuk!’94 just as this morning in a Long Island orchard it sang ’93Kuk! Kuk! Kuk!’94 The thrush at the creation uttered sounds like the words ’93Teacher! Teacher! Teacher!’94 as now it utters sounds like ’93Teacher! Teacher! Teacher!’94 In the summer of the year one, the yellow-hammer trilled that which sounded like the words ’93If! If! If!’94 as in this summer it trills ’93If! If! If!’94 The Maryland yellow-throat inherits and bequeaths the tune sounding like the words ’93Pity me! Pity me! Pity me!’94 The white sparrow’92s ’93Tseep, tseep’94 woke our great-grandfathers as it will awaken our great-grandchildren. The ’93Tee-ka-tee-ka-tee-ka’94 of the birds in the first century was the same as the ’93Tee-ka-tee-ka-tee-ka’94 of the nineteenth century.

The goldfiinch has for six thousand years been singing ’93De-ree-dee-ee-ree.’94 But these sounds, which we put in harsh words, they put in cadences rhythmic, soulful and enrapturing. Now, if there is this order and systematization and rhythm all through God’92s creation, does it not imply that we should have the same characteristics in the music we make or try to make? Is it not a wickedness that so many parents give no opportunity for the culture of their children in the art of sweet sound? If God stoops to educate every bluebird, oriole and grosbeak in song, how can parents be so indifferent about the musical development of the immortals in their household? While God will accept our attempts to sing, though it be only a hum or a drone, if we can do no better, what a shame that, in this last decade of the nineteenth century, when so many orchestral batons are waving and so many academies of music are in full concert and so many skilled men and women are waiting to offer instruction, there are so many people who cannot sing with any confidence in the house of God, because they have had no culture in this sacred art, or, while they are able to sing a fantasia at a piano amid the fluttering fans of social admirers, nevertheless feel utterly helpless when, in church, the surges of an Ariel or an Antioch roll over them. The old-fashioned country singing school, now much derided and caricatured (and indeed sometimes it was diverted from the real design into the culture of the soft emotions rather than the voice), nevertheless did admirable work, and in our churches we need singing schools to prepare our Sabbath audiences for prompt and spontaneous and multipotent psalmody. This world needs to be stormed with hallelujahs. We want a hemispheric campaign of hosannahs. From hearing a blind beggar sing, Martin Luther went home at forty years of age to write his first hymn. If the church of God universal is going to take this world for righteousness, there must be added a hundredfold more harmony, as well as a hundredfold more volume to sacred music.

Further, I notice in the song of birds that it is a divinely-taught song. The rarest prima donna of all the earth could not teach the robin one musical note. A kingfisher, flying over the roof of a temple a-quake with harmonies, would not catch up one melody. From the time that the first bird’92s throat was fashioned on the banks of the Gihon and Hiddekel until today on the Hudson or Rhine, the winged creature has learned nothing from the human race in the way of carol or anthem. The feathered songsters learned all their music direct from God. He gave them the art in a nest of straw or moss or sticks, and taught them how to lift that song into the higher heavens and sprinkle the earth with its dulcet enchantments. God-fashioned, God-tuned, God-launched, God-lifted music! And there is a kind of music that the Lord only can impart to you, my hearer. There have been depraved, reprobate and blasphemous souls which could sing till great auditoriums were in raptures. There have been soloists and bassos and barytones and sopranos whose brilliancy in concert halls has not been more famous than their debaucheries. But there is a kind of song which, like the song of birds, is divinely fashioned. Songs of pardon; songs of divine comfort; songs of worship; ’93songs in the night,’94 like those which David and Job mentioned; songs full of faith and tenderness and prayer, like those which the Christian mother sings over the sick cradle; songs of a broken heart being healed; songs of the dying flashed upon by opening portals of amethyst; songs like that which Paul commended to the Colossians when he said, ’93Admonish one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing, with grace in your hearts, to the Lord’94; songs like Moses sang after the tragedy of the Red Sea; songs like Deborah and Barak sang at the overthrow of Sisera; songs like Isaiah heard the redeemed sing as they came to Zion. O God, teach us that kind of song which thou only canst teach, and help us to sing it on earth and sing it in heaven. It was the highest result of sweet sound when under the playing of Paganini one auditor exclaimed reverently, ’93O God!’94 and another sobbed out, ’93O Christ!’94

Further, I remark in regard to the song of birds, that it is trustful, and without any fear of what may yet come. Will you tell me how it is possible for that wren, that sparrow, that chickadee to sing so sweetly, when they may any time be pounced on by a hawk and torn wing from wing? There are cruel beaks in thicket and in sky ready to slay the song birds. Herods on the wing. Modocs of the sky. Assassins armed with iron claw. Murderers of song floating up and down the heavens. How can the birds sing amid such perils? Beside that, how is the bird sure to get its food? Millions of birds have been starved. Yet it sings in the dawn without any certainty of breakfast or dinner or supper. Would it not be better to gather its food for the day before vocalizing? Beside that, the hunters are abroad. Bang! goes a gun in one direction. Bang! goes a gun in another direction. The song will attract the shot and add to the peril. Beside that, yonder is a thundercloud, and there may be hurricane and hail to be let loose, and what then will become of you, the poor warbler? Beside that, winter will come, and it may be smitten down before it gets to the tropics. Have you never seen the snow strewn with the birds belated in their migration? The titmouse mingles its voice with the snowstorms as Emerson describes the little thing he found in tempestuous January:

Here was this atom in full breath

Hurling defiance at vast death;

This scrap of valor just for play

Fronts the north wind in waistcoat gray.

For every bird, a thousand perils and disasters hovering and sweeping round and round. Yet, there it sings, and it is a trustful song. The bird that has it the hardest, sings the sweetest. The lark, from the shape of her claws, may not perch on a tree. In the grass her nest is exposed to every hoof that passes. One of the poorest shelters of all the earth is the lark’92s nest. If she sing at all, you will expect her to render the saddest of threnodies. No, no! She sings exultingly an hour without a pause and mounting three thousand feet without losing a note. Would God we all might learn the lesson. Whatever perils, whatever bereavements, whatever trials are yet to come; sing, sing with all your heart and sing with all your lungs. If you wait until all the hawks of trouble have folded their wings and all the hunters of hate have unloaded their guns and all the hurricanes of disaster have spent their fury, you will never sing at all. David, the pursued of Absalom, and the betrayed of Ahithophel, and the depleted of ’93sores that ran in the night,’94 presents us the best songs of the Bible. John Milton, not able to see his hand before his face, sings for us the most famous poem of all literature, and some of the most cheerful people I have ever met have been Christian people under physical, or domestic, or public torment. The songs of Charles Wesley, which we now calmly sing in church, were composed by him between mobs.

Further, in the sky-galleries there are songs adapt-ed to all moods. The meadow-lark is mournful and the goldfinch joyous and the grosbeak prolonged of note. But the libretto of nature is voluminous. Are you sad? you can hear from the bowers the echo of your grief. Are you glad? you can hear an echo of your happiness. Are you thoughtful? you can hear that which will plunge you into deeper profound. Are you weary? you may catch a restful air. So the songs of birds are administrative in all circumstances. And we do well to have a hymnology for all changes of condition. You may sing your woes into peace and rouse your joys into greater altitudes. Upon every condition of body and soul, let us try the power of song. The multitudinous utterances of grove and orchard and garden and forest suggest most delightful possibilities.

Further, I notice that the song of birds is a family song. Even those of the feathered throngs which have no song at all make what utterances they do in sounds of their own family of birds. The hoot of the owl, the clatter of the magpie, the crow of the chanticleer, the drumming of the grouse, the laugh of the loon in the Adirondacks, the cackle of the hen, the scream of the eagle, the croak of the raven, are sounds belonging to each particular family; but when you come to those which have real songs, how suggestive that it is always a family song. All the skylarks, all the nightingales, all the goldfinches, all the blackbirds, all the cuckoos, prefer the song of their own family and never sing anything else. So the most deeply impressive songs we ever sing are family songs. They have come down from generation to generation. You were sung to sleep in your infancy and childhood by songs that will sing in your soul forever. Where was it, my brother or sister, that you heard the family song’97on the banks of the Ohio or the Alabama or the Androscoggin or the Connecticut or the Tweed or the Thames or the Danube? That song at eventide, when you were tired out’97indeed, too tired to sleep, and you cried with leg-ache, and you were rocked and sung to sleep’97you hear it now, the soft voice from sweet lips, she as tired, perhaps, more tired than you, but she rocked and you slumbered. Oh, those family songs! The songs that father sang, that mother sang. They roll on us today with a reminiscence that fills the throat, as well as the heart, with emotion. In our house, in my childhood, it was always a religious song; I do not think that the old folks knew anything but religious songs; at any rate, I never heard them sing anything else. It was ’93Jesus, Lover of My Soul,’94 or ’93Rock of Ages,’94 or ’93There is a Fountain Filled with Blood,’94 or ’93Mary to the Saviour’92s Tomb.’94 Mothers, be careful what you sing your children to sleep with. Let it be nothing frivolous or silly. Better have in it something of Christ and Heaven; better have in it something that will help that boy thirty years from now to bear up under the bombardment of temptation; better have in it something that will help that daughter thirty years from now when upon her come the cares of motherhood and the agonies of bereavement and the brutal treatment of one who swore before high heaven that he would cherish and protect. Do not waste the best hour for making an impression upon your little one, the hour of dusk, the beach between the day and the night.

Sing not a doleful song, but a suggestive song, a Christian song, a song you will not be ashamed to meet when it comes to you in the eternal destiny of your son and daughter. The oriole has a loud song and the chewink a long song and the bluebird a short song, but it is always a family song; and let your gloaming song to your children, whether loud or long or short, be a Christian song. These family songs are about all we keep of the old homestead. The house where you were born will go into the hands of strangers. The garments that were carefully kept as relics will become moth-eaten. The family Bible can go into the possession of only one of the family. The lock of gray hair may be lost from the locket, and in a few years all signs and mementoes of the old homestead will be gone forever. But the family songs, those that we heard at two years of age, at five years of age, at ten years of age, will be indestructible, and at forty or fifty or sixty or seventy years of age will give us a mighty boost over some rough place in the path of our pilgrimage. Many years ago a group of white children were captured and carried off by the Indians. Years after a mother, who had lost two children in that capture, went among the Indians, and there were many white children in line, but so long a time had passed, the mother could not tell which were hers, until she began to sing the old nursery songs, and her two children immediately rushed up, shouting ’93Mamma!’94 ’93Mamma!’94 Yes, there is an immortality in a nursery song. Hear it, all you mothers, an immortality of power to rescue and save. What an occasion that must have been in this city, December 17, 1850, when Jenny Lind sang ’93Home, Sweet Home,’94 the author of those words, John Howard Payne, seated before her. She had rendered her other favorite songs, ’93Casta Diva,’94 and her ’93Flute Song,’94 with fine effect, but when she struck ’93Home, Sweet Home,’94 John Howard Payne rose under the power, and President Fillmore and Henry Clay and Daniel Webster, and the whole audience rose with him. Anything connected with home ransacks our entire nature with a holy power, and songs that get well started in the nursery, or by the family hearth, roll on after the lips that sung them are forever silent and the ears that first heard them forever cease to hear.

I preach this sermon just before many of you will go out to pass days or weeks in the country. Be careful how you treat the birds. Remember they are God’92s favorites, and if you offend them, you offend him. He is so fond of their voices that there are forests where for a hundred miles no human foot has ever trod and no human ear has ever listened. Those interminable forests are concert halls with only one auditor’97the Lord God Almighty. He builded those auditoriums of leaves and sky, and supports all that infinite minstrelsy for himself alone. Be careful how you treat his favorite choir. In Deuteronomy, he warns the people: ’93If a bird’92s nest chance to be before thee in the way in any tree, or on the ground, whether they be young ones or eggs, thou shalt not take the dam with the young, that it may be well with thee, and that thou mayest prolong thy days.’94 So you see your own longevity is related to your treatment of birds. Then go forth and attend the minstrelsy. Put off startling colors, which frighten the winged songsters into silence or flight, and move noiselessly into the woods, further and further from the main road, and have no conversation, for many a concert in and out of doors has been ruined by persistent talkers, and then sit down on a mossy bank:

Where a wild stream with headlong shock

Comes brawling down a bed of rock.’94

And after perhaps a half an hour of intense solitude there will be a tap of a beak on a tree branch far up, sounding like the tap of a musical baton, and then first there will be a solo, followed by a duet or quartet, and afterward by doxologies in all the tree tops and amid all the branches, and if you have a Bible along with you, and you can, without rustling the leaves, turn to the 148th Psalm of David, and read: ’93Praise the Lord, beasts, and all cattle, creeping things and flying fowl,’94 and then turn over quietly to my text, and read: ’93By them shall the fowls of the heaven have their habitation, which sing among the branches;’94 or, if under the power of the bird voices you are transported, as when Dr. Worgan played so powerfully on the organ at St. John’92s that Richard Cecil said he was in such blessed bewilderment he could not find in his Bible the first chapter of Isaiah, though he turned the leaves of the book over and over, and you shall be so overcome with forest harmony that you cannot find the Psalms of David, never mind, for God will speak to you so mightily it will make no difference whether you hear his voice from the printed page or the vibrating throat of one of his plumed creatures.

While this summer more than usual out of doors, let us have what my text suggests, an out-of-doors religion. What business had David, with all the advantages of costly religious service, and smoking incense on the altar, to be listening to the chantresses among the tree branches? Ah! he wanted to make himself and all who should come after him more alert and more worshipful amid the sweet sounds and beautiful sights of the natural world. There is an old church that needs to be re-dedicated. It is older than St. Paul’92s or St. Peter’92s or St. Mark’92s or St. Sophia’92s or St. Isaac’92s. It is the cathedral of Nature. That is the church in which the services of the millennium will be held. The buildings fashioned out of stone and brick and mortar will not hold the people. Again the Mount of Olives will be the pulpit; again the Jordan will be the baptistry; again the mountains will be the galleries; again the skies will be the blue ceiling; again the sunrise will be the front door and the sunset the back door of that temple; again the clouds will be the upholstery and the morning mist the incense; again the trees will be the organ-loft where ’93the fowls of heaven have their habitation which sing among the branches.’94

St. Francis d’92 Assisi preached a sermon to birds and pronounced a benediction upon them, but all birds preach to us, and their benediction is almost supernal. While, this summer, amid the works of God, let us learn responsiveness. Surely, if we cannot sing, we can hum a tune; and if we cannot hum a tune, we can whistle. If we cannot be an oriole, we can be a quail. In some way let us demonstrate our gratitude to God. Let us not be beaten by the chimney swallow and the humming bird and the brown thresher. Let us try to set everything in our life to music, and if we cannot give the carol of the song sparrow, take the plaint of the hermit thrush. Let our life be an anthem of worship to the God who created us and the Christ who ransomed us and the Holy Ghost who sanctifies us. And our last song! May it be our best song! The swan was thought by the ancients never to sing except when dying. In the time of Edward IV no one was allowed to own a swan except he were a king’92s son, or had considerable estate. Through one or two hundred years of life that bird was said never to utter anything like music, until its last moment came, and, then, lifting its crested beauty, it would pour forth a song of almost matchless thrill, resounding through the groves. And so, although the struggle of life may be too much for us, and we may find it hard to sing at all, when the last hour comes to you and me, may there be a radiance from above and a glory settling round that shall enable us to utter a song on the wings of which we will shall mount to where the music never ceases and the raptures never die.

What is that mother? The swan, my love;

He is floating down from his native grove.

No loved one, no nestling nigh;

He is floating down by himself to die.

Death darkens his eye and unplumes his wings,

Yet the sweetest song is the last he sings.

Live so, my child, that when death shall come,

Swan-like and sweet, it may waft thee home!

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage