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Which untill the grounde did strike the grype,

That dead he downe did fall.-Percy: Sir Aldingar.

She knyght-errant,

That acts in air the bloody tyrant;

While with quick wing, fierce beak and claws,

She breaks divine and human laws;

Ne'er pleas'd but with the hearts and livers

Of peartricks, teal, moor-powts, and plivers;
Yet is she much esteem'd and dandl'd,
Clean lodg'd, well fed, and softly handl'd.

-Ramsay: The Lure.

Perch'd on his wonted eyrie high,

Sleep seal'd the tercelet's wearied eye
That all the day had watch'd so well

The cushat dart across the dell.-Scott: Rokeby.

The valiant tersals.-Ramsay: Eagle and Robin.

As hagard hauke, presuming to contend,
With hardy fowle above his hable might,
His wearie pounces all in vain doth spend,
To trusse the prey too heavy for his flight,

Which coming down to ground, doth free itself by flight.

-Spenser: Faerie Queen.

Fancy, that wild and haggard faculty,

Untamed in most, and let at random fly,

Was wisely governed and reclaimed by thee;

Restraint and discipline was made endure,

And by thy calm and milder judgment brought to lure;
Yet when 'twas at some nobler quarry sent

With bold and towering wings it upward went,

Not lessened at the greatest height,

Not turned by the most giddy flights of dazzling wit.

-Oldham: Ode on Ben Jonson.

Enough for me

To boast the gentle spar-hawk on my fist,

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As coy and wild

As haggerds of the rock.—Shakespeare: Much Ado About Nothing.

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Or fly the partridge from the bristly field,
Retrieve the covey with my busy train,
Or with my soaring hobby dare the lark.
-Somerville: Field Sports.

The briddes singen, it is no nay,
The sperhauk and the popingay,
That joye it was to here,

The throstel cok made eke his lay,
The wode dove upon the spray
He sang ful loude and clere.

Sir Thopas fell in love-longing
Al whan he herd the throstel sing,

And priked as he were wood.

-Chaucer: Rhyme of Sir Thopas.

And rooks harangue that geese may vote.—Mallet : Tyburn.

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He'd prove a buzzard is no fowl,

And that a lord may be an owl.-Butler: Hudibras.

Shrill as the buzzard cock.1-Wordsworth: To a Child.

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Some haggard hawk, who had her eyry nigh,
Well pounc'd to fasten, and well wing'd to fly,

One they might trust their common wrongs to wreak,

The musquet and the coystrel were too weak;

Too fierce the falcon; but, above the rest,
The noble buzzard ever pleas'd me best ;
Of small renown, 'tis true; for, not to lie,
We call him but a hawk by courtesy,
I know he hates the pigeon-house and farm ;
And, more, in time of war has done us harm.
But all his hate on trivial points depends;
Give up our forms, and we shall soon be friends;
For pigeon's flesh he seems not much to care,
Cramm'd chickens are a more delicious fare.

-Dryden: Hind and Panther.

1 Not the Northern farmer's "buzzard-clock" or cockchafer.

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"God save King Buzzard!" was the general cry.
A portly prince, and goodly to the sight,
He seem'd a son of Anak for his height,
Like those whom stature did to crowns prefer;
Black-brow'd, and bluff, like Homer's Jupiter;
Broad-back'd and brawny, built for love's delight;
A prophet formèd to make a female proselyte.

-Dryden: Hind and Panther.

The monarch bird, with blythness hard
The chaunting litil silvan bard,

Calit up a buzart, quha was then

His favorite and chamberlane.—Ramsay: Eagle and Robin.

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FEN-SPARROW.

Fen-sparrows chirp, and fly to fetch

The withered reed-down rustling nigh;

And by the sunny side the ditch,

Prepare their dwelling warm and dry.

-Clare: Last of March.

FIELDFARE.

Beneath the broad and ample bone,

A fickle and a timorous guest,

The fieldfare framed his lowly nest.-Scott: Lady of the Lake.

Not yet the hawthorn bore her berries red,
With which the fieldfare, wintry guest, is fed.

-Cowper: The Needless Alarm.

Fieldfare flocks

From distant lands alight, and, chirping, fly
From hedge to hedge, avoiding man's approach.

-Grahame: Birds of Scotland.

The fieldfare grey, and he of ruddive wing,1
Hop o'er the field unheeding, easy prey

1 Redwing.

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To him whose heart has adamant enough
To level thunder at their humblest race.

-Hurdis: Favourite Village.

If, 'mid the tassels of the leafless ash,
A fieldfare flock alight, for early frosts
Prepare.-Grahame: British Georgics.

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FLAMINGO.

Flamingo, that rare bird

That gleams in the Indian air.-Shelley: Maria Gisborne.

Wading through marshes, where the rank seaweed
With spongy moss and flaccid lichens strove,

Flamingos, in their crimson tunics, stalked

On stately legs with far-exploring eye;

Or fed and slept in regimental lines,

Watched by their sentinels, whose clarion-screams
All in an instant woke the startled troop,
That mounted like a glorious exhalation,
And vanished through the welkin far away,
Nor paused till, on some lonely coast alighting,
Again their gorgeous cohort took the field.

-Montgomery: Pelican Island.

The flamingo see

Disporting like a meteor on the lakes.

-Campbell: Gertrude of Wyoming.

FOREIGN BIRDS.

Our poets have had only an indifferent repertory of foreign birds, or rather-seeing how backward natural history was till the present century-it is perhaps more to the purpose to say that they have made only an indifferent use of those they had. Their list comprises the following-the ostrich, pelican, vulture, condor, bird of paradise, humming-bird, flamingo, stork, crane, and some caged birds - canaries, cockatoos, and parrots.

Now the natural history of poetry is mainly derived from three sources: from Greek and Roman mythology, fables, and heraldry. These are all of questionable authenticity; but, on the other hand, they may, each of them, be said to present certain features specially suitable for poets' purposes, for the "facts" in myths, fables, and coats of arms rest on the vaguest authority, are hazy in outline and sketchy in detail, and possess a delightful elasticity in application. They have no angular certainties about them, no uncompromising and positive lumps of grit in them. They never get any harder than clay, and submit readily. therefore to fanciful manipulation. But these very merits, if I may call them so, have had a somewhat injurious effect upon poetry wherever it aimed, as the poets themselves assure us it always does, at truth. Moreover, by going one after the other to the same restricted sources of information, the poets have laid themselves open to the charge of a monotony in error almost amounting to plagiarism.

Of the general result of absurdity, the inevitable consequence of looking for Nature in heraldry, I need say nothing. When a Marvell actually went out into the fields and observed what he afterwards wrote, the world obtained not only poetry but poetry from the life; or when a Keats translates into words his own intuitive and tender sympathy with the out-of-doors about him, the result is the poetry of Nature herself. But with the hearthrug poets, if I may make the phrase-the poets who sit looking into the fire and trying to remember what they have ever heard or read about a particular object in Nature-the outcome appears to be invariably either a reminiscence of a myth or of some device on a coat of arms, or else a simple quotation. With regard to foreign birds, every poet has been more or less of the "hearthrug" order from necessity, as of course no amount of personal observation of English bird nature would have given the writer an insight into the appearance

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