(28)

(29)

Oft near some simple cottage he prefers
To rear his little home; there, pert and spruce,
He shares the refuse of the goodwife's churn,
Which kindly on the wall for him she leaves.
Below her lintel oft he lights, then in

He boldly flits, and fluttering loads his bill,
And to his young the yellow treasure bears.
-Grahame: Birds of Scotland.

What little birds, with frequent, shrillest chirp,
When honeysuckle flowers succeed the rose,
The inmost thicket haunt ?—their tawny breasts
Spotted with black bespeak the youngling thrush,
Though less in size. It is the robin's brood,
New flown, bewildered, still the downy tufts
Upon their heads.-Grahame: Birds of Scotland.

E'en as redbreast, shelt'ring in a bower,
Mourns the short darkness of a passing shower,
Then, while the azure sky extends around,
Darts on a worm that breaks the moisten'd ground,
And mounts the dripping fence with joy elate,
And shares the prize triumphant with his mate.
-Bloomfield: Walter and Jane.

(30)

The redbreast warbles still, but is content

With slender notes, and more than half suppressed,

Pleased with his solitude.-Cowper: Winter's Walk.

The robin is whistling all alone

With a mellow tune.-Cook: Autumn Sketch.

(31)

(32)

Only the solitary robin sings,

And, perch'd aloft, with melancholy note

(33)

Chants out the dirge of autumn; cheerless bird,

That loves the brown and desolated scene

And scanty fare of winter.-Hurdis: Village Curate.

The robin pensive autumn cheers

In all her locks of yellow.

-Burns: Humble Petition of Bruar Water.

(31)

(35)

(36)

(37)

So when the storm the forest rends,
The robin in the hedge descends,
And sober chirps securely.

-Burns: Epistle to Mr. Graham.

A solitaire through autumn's wan decay,
He heard the tootling robin sound her knell.

-Clare: The Village Minstrel.

Each woodland pipe is mute,

Save when the redbreast mourns the falling leaf;
Now plaintively, in interrupted trills,
He sings the dirge of the departing year.

-Grahame: British Georgics.

The pensive warbler of the ruddy breast
This moral sweetens by a heaven-taught lay,
Lulling the year with all its cares to rest.

-Wordsworth: The Trossachs.

(38)

The robin in the winter-time.

The robin that chirped in the frosty December.-Cook.

(39) From out the heaped-up mow he draws his sheaves, Dislodging the poor redbreast from his shelter, Where all the livelong night he slept secure ;

But now, affrighted, with uncertain flight,

Flutters round walls and roof, to find some hole

Through which he may escape.-J. Baillie: A Winter's Day.

(40)

(41)

Dearer the redbreast's note,

That mourns the fading year in Scotia's vales,
Than Philomel's where spring is ever new;
More dear the redbreast's sober suit,

So like the withered leaflet, than the glare
Of gaudy wings that make the Iris dim.

-Grahame: The Sabbath.

What aileth thee, Robin, that thou could'st pursue

A beautiful creature

That is gentle by nature?

(42)

Beneath the summer sky

From flower to flower let him fly;
'Tis all that he wishes to do.

The cheerer thou of our indoor sadness,
He is the friend of our summer gladness.
What hinders, then, that ye should be
Playmates in the sunny weather
And fly about in the air together?
His beautiful wings in crimson are drest,
A crimson as bright as thine own:
If thou would'st be happy in thy nest,
O pious bird! whom man loves best,
Love him or leave him alone.

-Wordsworth: The Redbreast and Butterfly.

The monarch bird with blythness hard

The chaunting litil silvan bard,

Calit up a buzart, quha was than
His favorite and chamberlane.
"Swith to my treasury," quod he,
"And to zon canty Robin gie
As meikle of our currant geir

As may maintain him throw the zeir ;
We can weil spair't, and it's his due."

He bad, and furth the Judas flew
Straight to the bench quhair Robin sung,
And with a wickit lieand tung

Said, "Ah! ze sing sae dull and ruch,
Ze haif deivt our lugs mair than enuch;
His majestie hes a nyse eir,

And nae mair of zour stuff can beir;
Poke up your pypes, be nae mair sene
At court ; I warn ze as a frein."

He spak, quhyle Robinis swelling breist,
And drouping wings, his greif exprest,
The teirs ran happing doun his cheik,
Grit grew his hairt, he coud nocht speik,
No for the tinsell of rewaird,

But that his notes met nae regaird.

Straicht to the schaw he spred his wing,
Resolvit again nae mair to sing,

(43)

(44)

Quhair princelie bountie is supprest
By sic with quhome they ar opprest,
Quha cannot beir, because they want it,
That ocht suld be to merit grantit.

-Allan Ramsay: Eagle and Robin.

They little thought that saw him come
That robins were so quarrelsome.
The door they opened, in he pops,
And to the highest perch he hops.
The parti-colour'd birds he chose,
The goldfinches and such as those,
With them he'd peck a bill and feed,
And very well at times agreed.
Canary birds were his delight,
With them he'd tête-à-tête all night;
But the brown linnets went to pot-
He killed them all upon the spot.

-King: The Eagle and the Robin.

Love away this fleeting life,

Like robin redbreast and his wife.

About the rooks few poets had any very positive ideas. A great many of them knew the bird personally, of course, for even those who cared least about Nature, and lived in cities, had had rooks thrust under their observation at one time or another. They appear, however, to have been struck only with four points-that the rooks "cawed;" that when they

flew in any number they formed "a blackening train;" that when you fired into a rookery the birds were in uproar; and that they built nests. For this last performance the rook is repeatedly admired as "busy." The cawing was not so much to the poets' taste: most of them thought it too "clamorous." Thomson says it is "discordant" (but elsewhere "amusive;") Pope, "croaking;" and Cunningham addresses it as "bird of discord." Cowper and one or two besides are civil to the bird, but the majority tar it with their crow-brush, and so dismiss it. Scott, meaning the rook, says

"Hoarse into middle air arose

The vespers of the roosting crows;"

Burns talks of

"The blackening train of crows
Winging their way to their repose;"

and Clare has

Crows, they flocked quawking to rest.'

1 It seems at first sight strange that, with such wandering habits, the phrase "straight as a crow" should be adopted to mark distances in a straight line across the open country; yet, when it is borne in mind how many persons confound the crow with the rook, and even talk of "the crows in a rookery," the suggestion will at once occur to the mind that the term owed its origin to its far gentler and more respectable relation, the rook, whose evening flights are among the most familiar sights of the country, and are invariably performed in a line so straight, that if a whole flock could be tracked through the air on any one evening, it would be found scarcely to deviate from that of the preceding or the following. It is to be feared that this inaccurate application of names has done the rook ill service; yet the two birds are totally distinct. Crows are solitary birds, rarely seen in more than pairs together; rooks are eminently sociable. Crows shun the haunts of men; rooks court the vicinity of his dwellings. Crows are carnivorous; rooks chiefly insectivorous.-British Birds in their Haunts, by Rev. C. A. Johns.