66

Amid the bower with woodbines wove,
Throughout the flower-enamelled grove,
The humming bees unwearied rove,

Gay blooming sweets among.
The cheerful birds, of varied hue,
Their sweet meandering notes pursue;
High soars the lark, and, lost to view,
Pours forth his grateful song.
The wand'ring brook, the glitt'ring rill,
The cuckoo's note heard from the hill,
The warbling thrush and blackbird shrill
Inspire with rapt'rous glee.

-A. Wilson: Return of Spring.

'Birds, joyous birds of the wandering wing, Whence is it ye come with the flowers of spring?" "We come from the shores of the green old Nile, From the land where the roses of Sharon smile, From the palms that wave through the Indian sky, From the myrrh trees of glowing Araby."

-Hemans: Miscellaneous Poems.

The birds of passage transmigrating come,
Unnumbered colonies of foreign wing,

At Nature's summons.

-Mallet: Augusta and Theodora.

Now various birds in melting concert sing,
And hail the beauty of the op'ning spring.

-Savage: To Dyer.

All vital things that wake to bring

News of birds and blossoming.

-Shelley: Hymn to Intellectual Beauty.

Cold doth not sting, the pretty birds do sing
Cuckoo, jug-jug, pee-wee, too-whit-a-woo.

-Nash: Spring.

To love the birds attune their chirping throats,
And on each breeze immortal music floats.

-Savage: Valentine's Day.

The birds sang love on every spray.

-Burns: To Mary in Heaven.

When birds sat like bridegrooms all pair'd on the spray.

Whilst birds from woodbine bowers and jasmine groves

Cunningham: Damon and Phillis.

Chant their glad nuptials and unenvied love.

-Garth: The Vesper Song.

While little feather'd songsters of the air
In woodlands tuneful woo and fondly pair.

-Savage: Valentine's Day.

The birds sing many a lovely lay

-Spenser: Faerie Queen.

Of God's high praise, and of their sweet love tune.

With elegies of love

Make vocal ev'ry spray.—Cunningham: Imitation.

Ful lusty was the wether and benigne,

For which the foules again the sonne shene,

What for the seson and the yonge grene,

Ful loude songen hir affections.

-Chaucer: Squire's Tale.

The smiling morn, the breathing spring,
Invite the tuneful birds to sing;

And while they warble from each spray

Love melts the universal lay.-Mallet: Loves.

Hence the glossy kind

Try every winning way inventive love

Can dictate, and in courtship to their mates
Pour forth their little souls. First, wide around,
With distant awe, in airy rings they rove,
Endeavouring by a thousand tricks to catch
The cunning, conscious, half-averted glance
Of their regardless charmer. Should she seem
Softening the least approvance to bestow,
Their colours burnish, and, by hope inspir'd,
They brisk advance; then, on a sudden struck,
Retire disorder'd; then again approach;
In fond rotation spread the spotted wing,
And shiver every feather with desire.

-Thomson: Spring.

-Cowper: Winter Walk at Noon.

Summer birds, pursuing gilded flies.

The singing of the summer birds.

-Shelley: Epipsychidion.

The Summer loves not silence; her great charm

Is in the concourse of a thousand sounds :--
The birds, the winds, the very earth herself
Breathing with life at every bursting pore,
And that low melody that comes

I know not whence or how :-Faber: Heidelberg Castle.

O hear the song

Of sylvan choristers, hosanna sweet,

Sweet hallelujah to the King of kings

With free voice chanting. Above all delight
The woodlark echoing, the nightingale

Gracing with plaintive pause her various strain,
The wild dove cooing diapason soft,

Language of love with elegance express'd,
And ouzel fluting with melodious pipe.

-Hurdis: Favourite Vilage.

How pleasant the life of a bird must be,
Flitting about on each leafy tree!

They have left their nests on the forest bough,
Their homes of delight they need not now;
And the young and the old they wander out,
And traverse their green world round about.
And hark! at the top of their leafy hall
Now one to the other in love they call.
"Come up! come up!" they seem to say,
Where the topmost twigs in the hedges stray.
"Come up! come up! for the world is fair
Where the merry leaves dance in the summer air.”

And the birds below give back the cry,

"We come! we come! to the branches high."

How pleasant the life of a bird must be,

Living in love in a leafy tree!

And away through the air what joy to go,

And to look on the green, bright earth below!

-M. Howitt: Birds in Summer.

When day declining sheds a silver gleam,
What time the mayfly haunts the pool or stream,
When the still owl skims round the grassy mead,
What time the timorous hare leaps forth to feed,
Then be the time to steal adown the vale
And listen to the vagrant cuckoo's tale,
To hear the clamorous curlew call his mate,
Or the soft quail her tender pain relate ;
To see the swallow sweep the dark'ning plain,
Belated to support her infant train;

To mark the swift, in rapid giddy ring,

Dash round the steeple unsubdued of wing.

-Gilbert White: Summer Evening's Walk.

Cooing sits the lonely dove

Calling home her absent love;

With "Kirchup! kirchup!" among the wheats
Partridge distant partridge greets,

Beckoning hints to those that roam,

That guide the squandered covey home.
Swallows check their winding flight,
And, twittering, on the chimney 'light;
Round the pond the martins flirt,
Their snowy breasts bedaubed with dirt;
While the mason 'neath the slates
Each mortar-bearing bird awaits :

By art untaught, each labouring spouse
Curious daubs his hanging house.

Bats flit by in hood and cowl,

And thro' the barn-hole pops the owl.

-John Clare: Summer Evening.

Now vows connubial chain the plighted pair,
And join paternal with maternal care;
The married birds with nice selection cull

Soft thistledown, grey moss, and scattered wool,
Line the secluded nest with feathery wings,
Meet with fond bills, and woo with fluttering wings.

-Darwin: Reproduction of Life.

Of birds who each, according to her kind,

Proper materials for her nest can find,

And build a frame which deepest thoughts in man
Would or amend or imitate in vain.-Prior: Solomon.

But most of all it wins my admiration

To view the structure of this little work,

A bird's nest. Mark it well, within, without.

No tool had he that wrought, no knife to cut,

No nail to fix, no bodkin to insert,

No glue to join; his little beak was all.

And yet how neatly finish'd! What nice hand,

With every implement and means of art,

And twenty years' apprenticeship to boot,

Could make me such another?-Hurdis: Village Curate.

As swift

As bird on wing to breast its eggs again,

And patient as a hen-bird.-Keats: Isabella.

Birds in their little nests agree.-Watts: Song.

And as a bird each fond endearment tries
To tempt its new-fledg'd offspring to the skies.

-Goldsmith: Deserted Village.

About a young bird's flutter from the woods. -Keats: Lamia.

Sendeth forth

Her clergions, her own dear worth,

To mount and fly up to the air,

Where then they sing in order fair,

And tell in song full merrily

How they have slept full quietly

That night, about their mother's sides.

-Surrey: Restless Lover.

As when a bird,

A roaming gone for food to feed her young,
Returning to the well-known bush, beholds
A mossy tuft where once had hung her nest,