(32)

Oh, tuneful swan! oh, melancholy bird!
Sweet was that midnight miracle of song,
Rich with ripe sorrow, needful of no word
To tell of pain and love, and love's deep wrong,
Hinting a piteous tale-perchance how long
Thy unknown tears were mingled with the lake,
What time disguised thy leafy mates among,
And no eye knew what human love and ache

Dwelt in those dewy leaves, and heart so nigh to break.
-Hood: Two Swans.

(33) 'Midst the long reeds that o'er a Grecian stream Unto the faint wind sighed melodiously,

And where the sculpture of a broken shrine

Sent out through shadowy grass and thick wild-flowers
Dim alabaster gleams, a lonely swan

Warbled his death-chant, and a poet stood

Listening to that strange music as it shook
The lilies on the wave and made the pines
And all the laurels of the haunted shore
Thrill to its passion. Oh, the tones were sweet,
Even painfully, as with the sweetness wrung
From parting love, and to the poet's thought
This was their language :—

Summer, I depart !

Oh, light and laughing Summer, fare thee well!
No song the less through thy rich woods will swell
For one, one broken heart.

High in the calm blue heaven

Even then a skylark hung; soft summer clouds

Were floating round him all transpierced with light,

And 'midst that pearly radiance his dark wings
Quivered with song-such free triumphant song
As if tears were not-as if breaking hearts
Had not a place below, and thus that strain
Spoke to the poet's ear exultingly :-
The Summer is come, she saith, Rejoice.
-So those two voices met.
-Hemans: Lyrics.

(34)

And now the goddess bids the birds appear,
Raise all their music and salute the year;

(35)

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(41)

Then deep the swan begins, and deep the song
Skims o'er the water where he sails along.

-Parnell: Vigil and Venus.

Upon that famous river's farther shore

There stood a snowie swan, of heavenly hiew
And gentle kinde, as ever fowle afore;

A fairer one in all the goodlie crew

Of white Strimonian brood might no man view:
There he most sweetly sung the prophecie

Of his owne death in doleful elegie.

-Spenser: Ruines of Time.

E'en as a dying swan, sweeter for failing breath,
Dies not, but rather lives in her last dying song.

-Crashew: Sand's Epigram.

At last, when all his mourning melodie
He ended had, that both the shores resounded,
Feeling the fit that him forward to die,
With loftie flight about the earth he bounded,
And out of sight to highest heaven mounted,
Where now he is become an heavenly signe ;
There now the joy is his, here sorrow mine.

-Spenser: Ruines of Time.

Swans sing before they die; 'twere not bad thing
Should certain persons die before they sing.-Coleridge.

The goddess' waggoners,

The swans.-Mariowe: Hero and Leander.

Love with anxious mind,

To make his mother guard the tune assigned,

Drew forth her proud white swans, and traced the pair

That wheel her chariot in the purple air.

-Parnell: Judgment of Paris.

The white swans on the lake

For softness might rival her breast.

-Cunningham: Phillis.

(42) Prince Amadis rose from the flowery brake, While, imaged serenely in the lake,

The roseate hue, with gold bars freaked

By a flight of wild swans was duskily streaked.
In a stiff-bending line through the rich sunset
They wavered like cloud-spots of glossy jet,
And with rude piping they marshalled their rear
In a phalanx above the tranquil mere.

Then for one moment their huge wings they shake,
Then in wide spiral circuits drop down in the lake ;
The dark water gurgles, thus suddenly cloven,
In wakes of white bubbles interwoven.

Are there deep instincts that lurk below

In those dipping breasts of driven snow?

Through the calm, through the winds, when the hartstones

ring,

The convoy passed with untiring wing,

And oft from their course for hours they drove,

As though they winnowed the air for love.

Till Avon's swans, while rung the grove
With Montfort's hate and Basil's love,

Awakening at the inspired strain,

Deem'd their own Shakespeare lived again.

-Scott: Marmion.

In swelling air

The Theban swan does upward bear

Into the walks of clouds, where he does play.

-Cowley: Pindarick Od:

'Twas such a gift the prophet's sacred pen]

On his departure left the sons of men.

Thus he and thus the swan her breath resigns
Within the beauty of poetic rimes;

(47)

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(49)

He white with innocence, his figure she,
And both harmonious, but the sweeter he.

-Parnell: Moses.

On a stiff gale (as Flaccus sings)
The Theban swan extends his wings,
When thro' th' ethereal clouds he flies;
To the same pitch our swan doth rise :
Old Pindar's flights by him are reach'd,
When on that gale his wings are stretch'd.

-Denham: Cowley's Death.

The silver swan, or swan opposed to her-
Rare bird! whose form the raven-plumage decks,
And graceful curve her three alluring necks.
All these a decent entertainment give,
And by their comforts comfortably live.

-Crabbe: Letter XI.

The swane-fethars, that his arrowe bar,
With his hard blood the wear wete.

-Percy: Second Fit.

G

(50)

A fat swan loved he best of any rost:

-Chaucer: Prologue.

(1)

(2)

(3)

SWIFT.

Some swifts, the giants of the swallow kind,
Large-limb'd, stout-hearted, but of stupid mind
(For Swisses or for Gibeonites design'd),
These lubbers.-Dryden: Hind and Panther.

Why ever on the wing or perched elate?
Because I fell not from my first estate.
-This is my charter to the boundless skies:
Stoop not to earth on pain no more to rise.

-Montgomery: Birds.

To mark the swift in rapid giddy ring
Rush round the steeple, unsubdued of wing.
Amusive birds! say where your hid retreat
When the frost rages and the tempests beat?

(4)

Whence your return, by such nice instinct led,
When spring, soft season, lifts her bloomy head?
Such baffled searches mock man's prying pride,—
The God of nature is your secret guide!

-Gilbert White: Summer Evening's Walk.
High as the ev'ning swift.-Hurdis: The Village Curate.

THRUSH.

(1) The mavis mild and mellow (Burns: Humble Petition of Bruar Water); Joyous thrush (Mackay: I Love my Love); The soft-piping thrush (Cook); The throstle-cock's clear song (M. Howitt); Various notes, sweet, solemn, loud, and deep (Leyden: Clyde); Thrushes shrill (Gay: Shepherd's Week); The shrill-tongued thrush (Blair); Shrillvoiced thrush (Wordsworth); Throstle with his note so true (Shakespeare).

The varying thrush commands a tuneful maze.

The thrush, a spendthrift of his powers,

(2)

-Savage: The Wanderer.

(3)

The thrush's stammering throat.

-Montgomery: Walk in Spring.

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Enrapturing heaven and earth.-Montgomery: Burns.

The thrush is busy in the wood,

And carols loud and strong.— Wordsworth: Shepherd Boy.

Thrush, thrush! have mercy on thy little bill!

--I play to please myself, albeit ill;

And yet-though how it comes I cannot tell-
My singing pleases all the world as well.

-Montgomery: Birds.

-Darwin: The Loves of the Plants.

Loud shrieks the lone thrush from his leafless thorn.

(8)

(9)

The throstle chants the rising year.—Shenstone: Odes.

The tall ash-tree, to whose topmost twig

A thrush resorts and annually chants.

-Wordsworth: Excursion.