CARRIER PIGEON.

(72) Fair traveller of the pathless air,
To Zara's bowers these accents bear.

(73)

(74)

But spread, oh spread your pinion blue,

To guard my lines from rain or dew.-Leyden: Courier Dove.

Speed with thy tidings, beautiful dove!

Bird of good omen, may God be thy guide!

-Mackay: Bordeaux to Paris.

Led by what chart, transports the timid dove
The wreaths of conquest, or the vows of love?
Say, thro' the clouds what compass points her flight?
Monarchs have gazed and nations blessed the sight.
Pile rocks on rocks, bid woods and mountains rise,
Eclipse her native shades, her native skies :-
'Tis vain! thro' Ether's pathless wilds she goes,
And lights at last where all her cares repose.
Sweet bird thy truth shall Harlem's walls attest,
And unborn ages consecrate thy nest.
When, with the silent energy of grief,

With looks that asked, yet dared not hope relief,

Want with her babes round generous Valour clung,
To wring the slow surrender from his tongue,
'Twas thine to animate her closing eye;

Alas! 'twas thine perchance the first to die,

Crushed by her meagre hand when welcomed from the sky.
-Rogers: Pleasures of Memory.

(75) Straight to their glen the ransomed patriarchs pass; As doves released their parent dwelling find,

(76)

(77)

They fly for life, nor cast a look behind.-Montgomery: Flood.

And Lilian gave her welcome kind,

But wonder'd what could bring

So young a carrier dove as this

So late upon the wing.-Mackay: Lump of Gold.

The bird let loose in eastern skies,

When hastening fondly ho ne,

(77)

Ne'er stoops to earth her wing, nor flies
Where idle warblers roam,

But high she shoots through air and light,
Above all low delay,

Where nothing earthly bounds her flight,

Nor shadow dims her way.-Moore: The Bird.

Welcome, sweet bird, through the sunny air winging,
Swift hast thou come o'er the far shining sea,
Like Seba's dove, on thy snowy neck bringing
Love's written vows from my lover to me.

Oh! in thy absence, what hours did I number !—
Saying oft, "Idle bird, how could he rest?"
But thou art come at last, take now thy slumber,
And lull thee in dreams of all thou lov'st best.

-Moore: Evenings in Greece.

(78) Emissary pigeon, such as the Meccan prophet used of yore (Dryden); Mecca's blue sacred pigeon (Moore).

(1)

DUCKS.

Loud, on the brink of her foul puddle quacks
The clam'rous duck, while her more silent lord,
With his green glossy nape, assiduous oils
His shining beak, and spreads the thin defence
With nice precision o'er his thirsty plumes.
So falls the shower in vain, and he secure
Stalks in the deluge, and defies it all,
The fine dew trickling from his sides unfelt;

Nothing impaired, with clean and ruddy leg

Through ev'ry plash he wades, with chatt'ring beak
Fishes the miry shallow as he goes;

In quest of snail, of slug, or winding worm ;

Or launching from the shore his feather'd fleet,
Pilots his dames along the flooded dyke.

-Hurdis: Favourite Village.

(2)

And, plausible and silver-tongued, below

The drake his chattering seraglio leads,

At the near pool to bathe.-Hurdis: Favourite Village.

M

Mother." And has the speckled hen brought off her brood?"
Francis.-"Not yet; but that old duck I told you of,

She hatched eleven out of twelve to-day."
Child." And, granny, they're so yellow."

Mother.-
"Ay, my lad."
Child. "Yellow as gold, yellow as Willie's hair."
Francis.-
Yes, granny, only think,
Why, father means to sell them when they're fat."

Child." But I want one to play with-oh, I want
A little yellow duck to take to bed with me."
Jean Ingelow: Supper at the Mill.

EAGLES.

In fine contrast to the poets' dove is the poets' eagle, a superb fowl, but otherwise non-existent, except in poetry and heraldry. Indeed, in their treatment of the eagle the poets follow with curious fidelity the traditions of heraldry, and I find that the relative importance attached by them to different aspects of the eagle-character coincides exactly with the proportions prescribed in armorial art. references to "the monarch bird" concern themselves, therefore, most frequently with the eagle as the symbol of sovereignty; next, with its powers of vision; next, with its "proving its young;" next, with it as the bird of Jove, and finally as the natural enemy of the serpent. Minor heraldic, and therefore minor poetical, significances are the eagle's powers of flight and its familiarity with storms. More exclusively the poets' own is the eagle as the Bird of Freedom, and the extension of its significance as a temporal sovereign to sovereignty and supremacy of all kinds.

Now, the natural history of heraldry is borrowed from tradition and such Aristotelian fancies as had become popularised; so that the poets' eagle is as purely a bird of fiction as any other bird for which the poets went to the

same source.

But this does not prevent it from being a most admirable creation. Extravagance has no limit in their pursuit of it; yet they never falter from a sunward path. Description is a perpetual coronation.

"The towering eagles to the realms of light,

By their strong pounces claim a regal right."

"Sailing with supreme dominion
Through the azure deep of air."

Or again :

"Eagles golden-feathered who do tower
Above us in their beauty and must reign
In right thereof."

"The Olympian eagle's vision" had passed, in such phrases as "eagle glance" and "eagle eye," into a truism centuries ago; yet upon it is based a majority of the poets' references to "the child of light," one very favourite detail of its eyesight being its reputed power of staring into the sun without personal inconvenience. "As eagles drink the noontide flames," is a mere platitude with poets, and

"The eagle's gaze alone surveys

The sun's meridian splendour"

is a postulate which they seem to consider beyond dispute. "Exulting in the light," and "swimming in the eye of noon," are two fancies as popular in heraldry as in poetry proper. Its flight, in the same way, being of a great elevation

"Say! who can soar beyond the eagle's flight;
Has he not reached to glory's utmost height?"

takes the poets' eagle, "the playmate of the storm," into "the upper ether," where the sun swims in all his unveiled majesty of flame :

"Triumphant on the bosom of the storm

Glances the fire-clad eagle's wheeling form.
Breasting the whirlwind with impetuous flight.
Which bears her up,

Destined for highest heaven."

And then, in a succession of delightful thoughts, the bird is presented to us—

"On sounding pinion borne he soars, and shrouds

66

His proud aspiring head among the clouds."

Dim-seen-eagles."-" The nearest to the sky."-"Faint
sound of eagles melting into blue."

Until we know it

"Sublime on eagle pinions driven,

Sailing in triumph through the ethereal way,
Bear on the sun and bask in open day,"

Or,

"Soaring

With upward pinions through the flood of day,
And, giving full bosom to the blaze, gain on the sun."

But though gone "where the eye cannot follow," its vision "yet pierces downward, onward, and above;" and on a sudden we hear a

"Muffled roaring Like an eagle's wing"

and "stouping with all their might," there presently plunge from the blue, "like a dradded bolt of Jove," the parent eagles

'Summoned by their infants' cries, Whom some rude hands would make a prize,

Haste to relieve, and with their wings outfly their eyes."

Anon, struck with hunger on remembering her young, the mother-bird, "the queen eagle "

"Seeks her aerie hanging

In the mountain cedar's hair,