The crows that stalk anear

Begin to trail for heat their glossy wings.

-Jean Ingelow: Afternoon.

O poor birds! where must ye fly

Now your water-pots are dry?

If ye stay upon the heath,

Ye'll be choak'd and clamm'd to death:

Therefore leave the shadeless goss,
Seek the spring-head lin'd with moss;
There your little feet may stand,

Safely printing in the sand.-Clare: Noon.

And where the hawthorn branches o'er the pool,
The little bird, forsaking song and nest,
Flutters on dripping twigs his limbs to cool,

And splashes in the stream his burning breast.

-Clare: Noon.

Then comes the silence of the dewy hour,

With songs of noontide's birds, thrilling in fancy's ear.

The feather'd choir, . . .

-Grahame: May.

Perched on ev'ning bough, shall join your worship.

-Watts: Lyric Poems.

O Hesperus! thou bringest all good things
. . To the young bird the parent's brooding wings.

-Byron: Don Juan.

The birds are on the branches dreaming.

-Shelley: Rosalind and Helen.

Painted bird sleeping beneath the moon.-Shelley: Alastor.

The weary bird steals softly to its nest.-A. Wilson: Hymn. Fowls in their clay nests were couched.—Paradise Regained. The sheep are gone to fold, birds to their nest.

-Shakespeare: Venus and Adonis.

O the night brings sleep

To the greenwoods deep,

To the bird of the woods its nest.-Cornwall: Night.

2

No warbling cheers the woods, the feather'd choir,
To court kind slumbers, to their sprays retire.-Gay: Sports.

The sweet poet of the vernal groves

Melts all the night in strains of am'rous love.

-Armstrong: On Health.

The birds that fly

-Parnell: Frogs and Mice.

Thro' wild expanses of the midway sky.

Her spectres wan and birds of boding cry,

He gives to range the dreary sky.—Gray: Progress of Poesy.

A shriek

Flew up through that long avenue of light,
Fleetly as some dark, ominous bird of night
Across the sun, and soon was out of sight!

-Moore: Lalla Rookh.

And birds of death their fatal dirges sing.

-Sir W. Jones: Solima.

Help me, ye banefull byrds! whose shrieking sound

Is signe of dreery death.-Spenser: Shepheard's Calendar. The birds of ill presage,

This lucklesse chance foretold,

By dernfull noise.-Spenser: Elegiac Poems.

Birds of ill omen hover'd in the air,

And by their cries bad us for graves prepare;
And as our destiny they seem'd t'unfold,

Dropp'd dead of the same fate they had foretold.

-Otway: The Poet's Complaint.

Birds of omen, dark and foul,

Night-crow, raven, bat, and owl.—-Scott: Gaelic Legend.

Let not the shriech-owle nor the storke be heard ;

Nor the night-raven, that still deadly yels;

Nor damned ghosts, cald up with mighty spels;

Nor griesly vultures make us once affeard :

Ne let th' unpleasant quyre of frogs still croking

Make us to wish theyr choking.-Spenser: Epithalamion.

Each bird of evil omen woke,

The raven gave his fatal croak,

And shrieked the night-crow from the oak.

-Scott: Harold the Dauntless.

Lone Philomela tun'd the silent grove;

The night-crowe, with the melody alarm'd,

Now paus'd, now listen'd, and awhile was charm'd.

-Savage: Wanderer.

But watching, weeping, all was vain;

She never saw his bark again.

The owlet's solitary cry,

The night-hawk flitting darkly by,

And oft the hateful carrion bird

Heavily flapping his clogg'd wing,

Which reek'd with that day's banqueting,

Was all she saw, was all she heard.-Moore: Lalla Rookh.

No chearful gleams here pierc'd the gloom,

He hears no chearful sound;

But shrill night-raven's yelling scream,

And serpents hissing round.-Birth of St. George (Ballad).

Here no night-ravens lodge, more black than p tch,

Nor elvish ghosts, nor gastly owles doe flee.

-Spenser: Shepheard's Calendar.

While stormy winds over her blew,

And night-ravens croak'd all around.-Moore: Song.

Where brooding darkness spreads her jealous wings
And the night-raven sings.-Milton: L'Allegro.

My song the midnight raven has out-wing'd,
And shot, ambitious of unbounded scenes,
Beyond the flaming limits of the world
Her gloomy flight.-Young: The Consolation.

And fatall birds about them flocked were,
Such as by nature men abhorre and hate;
The ill-faste owle, death's dreadfull messengere;

The hoars night-raven,' trump of dolefull drere;

1 In "Much Ado about Nothing" is the line-"I had as lief have heard the night raven, come what plague could after it."

The lether-winged batt, daye's enemy;
The ruefull shrick, still waiting on the bere;
The whistler shrill, that whoso heares doth dy;
The hellish harpyes, prophets of sad destiny.
-Spenser: Faerie Queen.

He the seven birds hath seen that never part,
Seen the Seven Whistlers in their nightly rounds,
And counted them.-Wordsworth: Sonnets.

Oh! did you not hear a voice of death?
And did you not mark the paly form

Which rode on the silver mist of the heath,
And sung a ghostly dirge in the storm?
Was it a wailing bird of the gloom,

Which shrieks on the house of woe all night?
Or a shivering fiend that flew to a tomb,
To howl and to feed till the glance of light?

-Moore: Shield,

See, the birds together,

In this splendid weather,

Worship God (for He is the God of birds as well as men);

And each feathered neighbour

Enters on his labour,

Sparrow, robin, redpole, finch, the linnet, and the wren.

The painted birds, companions of the spring.

-Mary Howitt: An April Day.

-Dryden: Flower and Leaf.

Th' unnumbered melodies of spring.

-Beattie: Judgment of Paris.

The soote season, that bud and bloom forth brings,
With green hath clad the hill, and eke the vale.
The nightingale with feathers new she sings;
The turtle to her mate hath told her tale.
Summer is come, for every spray now springs ;
The hart hath hung his old head on the pale;
The buck in brake his winter coat he slings;
The fishes flete with new repaired scale;
The adder all her slough away she slings;

The swift swallow pursueth the flies smale ;
The busy bee her honey now she wings.
Winter is won, that was the flowers' bale.

-Surrey: Description of Spring.

And now the goddess bids the birds appear,
Raise all their music, and salute the year.
Then deep the swan begins, and deep the song

Runs o'er the water where she sails along,

While Philomela tunes a treble strain.-Wyatt: Song.

Go inquire

Of Nature-not among Tartarean rocks
Whither the hungry vulture with his prey
Returns-not where the lion's sullen roar
At noon resounds along the lonely banks
Of ancient Tigris: but her gentler scenes,
The dove-cote and the shepherd's fold at morn
Consult, or by the meadow's fragrant hedge

In spring-time, when the woodlands first are green,
Attend the linnet singing to his mate

Couch'd o'er their tender young.

-Akenside: Pleasures of Imagination.

Of feathered minstrels first and last,

The robin's song's again begun,
And as skies clear when overcast,
Larks rise to hail the peeping sun.
The starling peewits as they pass
Scream, joyous whirring, overhead,
Right glad the fields and meadow-grass
Will quickly hide their careless shed;
The rooks where yonder witchens spread
Quawk clamorous to the spring's approach;
Here silent from its watery bed

To hail its coming leaps the roach.

-John Clare: Last of March.

'Twas so to me, who saw the chearfull spring
Pictur'd in every meadow, heard birds sing
Sonnets in every grove, saw fishes play
In the cool crystal streams like lambs in May.

-Walton: To his Brother.