SOURCE: "The Essays of Robert Peter Tristram Coffin," in Colby Library Quarterly, Vol. VII, No. 4, December, 1965, pp. 161-69.

In the following essay, Witham argues that Coffin's skill as an essayist derives from his visionary aptitude as a poet and from his joviality as a person.

A thrush singing in the woods. . . . It was the first bird I had ever really heard sing. It was the last marvel in a long chain of marvels. The first violets, like pieces of the sky, the first anemones, like drops of snow left over into April. I had had my first trip out past all houses, out of sight of all windows and doors. I was too tired to take in anything more.

Then, when the shadow of the earth was climbing up the eastern sky, the bird sang among the distant trees. Three broken little songs rising higher and higher until...