Drooping she perches on her wonted spray,
Then in a plaintive strain, repeated oft,
Monotonous, laments her piteous lot.

-Grahame: British Georgics.

But come the more rare such delights to the heart,
The more we should welcome, and bless them the more
They're ours when we meet-they are lost when we part,
Like birds that bring summer, and fly when 'tis o'er.
-Moore: Song.

Voluptuous elegance, the lovely child
Of ease and opulence, that never comes
But, like a bird of summer, to attend

The brightest sunshine of a glorious state.

-West: Garter.

The

year is overgrown :

Summer like a bird hath flown. -Barry Cornwall: To a Friend.

In the damp and chilling air

The birds are tuneless.-Mackay: Time.

And the glossy finches chatter
Up and down, up and down,
And the chaffinch idly sitteth
With her mate upon the sheaves,
And the wistful robin flitteth
Over beds of yellow leaves ;

Through the fields and fallows wending,

It is sad to walk alone.-Jean Ingelow: Afternoon.

Winter cold is coming on;
No more calls the cuckoo,
No more doth the music gush
From the silver-throated thrush;

No more now at "evening pale
Singeth sad the nightingale,
Nor the blackbird on the lawn,

Nor the lark at dewy dawn.—Barry Cornwall: Winter.

The wild rose, Fancy, dieth,

The sweet bird, Memory, flieth,

And leaveth me alone.-Barry Cornwall: Song.

The wanderers of heaven

Each to his home retires, save those that love
To take their pastime in the troubled air,
Or skimming flutter round the dimpling pool.

-Thomson: Winter.

Through the city,

Like birds before a storm, the Santons shriek.

-Shelley: Hellas.

Lo! bird and beast, impress'd by Nature's hand
In homeward warnings through each feeling nerve,
Haste from the hour of terror and of storm.

-Mallet: The Excursion.

And the birds scream their agony through air.

But chief the plumy race,

-Byron: Heaven and Earth.

The tenants of the sky, its changes speak,

Retiring from the downs where all day long

They pecked their scanty fare; a blackening train
Of clamorous rooks thick urge their weary flight,
And seek the closing shelter of the grove;

Amorous, in his bower the wailing owl

Plies his sad song; the cormorant on high
Wheels from the deep and screams along the land;
Loud shrieks the soaring heron, and with wild wing
The arching seafowl cleave the flaky cloud.

-Thomson: Winter.

A winter such as when birds die

In the deep forests.-Shelley: Summer and Winter.

More dreary cold

Than a forsaken bird's nest filled with snow.

-Wordsworth: Sonnets.

Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.

-Shakespeare: Sonnet.

Of various plume and chirp, the shiv'ring birds
Alight on hedge or bush, where, late concealed,
Their nests now hang apparent to the view.

-Grahame: British Georgics.

The little noisy songsters on the wing
All shivering on the bough forget to sing.

-Mallet: Winter's Day.

From hawless thorn to brier the chirping flocks
Flit shivering.-Grahame: British Geor ̧ics.

On the haw-clustered thorns, a motley flock
Of birds, of various plume and various note,
Discordant chirp; the linnet, and the thrush
With speckled breast, the blackbird yellow-beaked,
The goldfinch, fieldfare, with the sparrow, pert
And clamorous above his shivering mates,
While on the house-top faint the redbreast plaints.
-Grahame: November

So little birds in winter's frost and snow,

First on the ground each fairy dream pursue,
Though sought in vain; yet, bent on higher view,
Still chirp and hope, and wipe each glossy bill;
And, undismay'd, undishearten'd still,

Hop on the snow-clothed bough, and chirp again,
Heedless of naked shade and frozen plain:

Till, like to me, these victims of the blast,
Each foolish, fruitless wish resign'd at last,

Are glad to seek the place from which they went,
And put up with distress, and be content.

-Clare: A Village

Ilk happy bird, wee helpless thing,
That in the weary months o' spring
Delighted me to hear thee sing,

What's come o' thee?

Whare wilt thou cower thy chittering wing

And close thy e'e?

-Burns: Winter Night.

The birds sit chittering in the thorn,

A' day they fare but sparely.—Burns: Song.

Starved birds with tame and gentle wing-Cook: Summer.
The fowls of heaven,

Tamed by the cruel season, crowd around

The winnowing store, and claim the little boon
Which Providence assigns them.-Thomson: Winter.
The birds now quit their holes and lurking sheds,
Most mute and melancholy, where through night,
All nestling close to keep each other warm,
In downy sleep they had forget their hardships;
But not to chant and carol in the air,
Or lightly swing upon some waving bough,
And merrily return each other's notes.
No; silently they hop from bush to bush,

Can find no seed to stop their craving want,

Then bend their flight to some low smoking cot,
Chirp in the roof, or at the window peck,
To tell their wants to those who lodge within.

-J. Baillie: Winter's Day.

A widow bird sate mourning for her love

Upon a wintry bough: 4

The frozen wind crept on above,

The freezing stream below.-Shelley: Song.

In dealing with individual birds, fowls in particular, the poets are at some disadvantage. The subject possesses all the characteristics which Emerson, Hazlitt, and other essayists aver a poet's subject should not possess. Its very particu larity condemns it. No free heraldic treatment is possible. All the margins are too punctually defined, and most of its details so well known to the world at large, that a poet's digressions from the received importraiture appear to many to be simple errors of innocence. But poets wear large cloaks; and however specious their apparent ignorance of facts, it is impossible to say how much knowledge they may not really be hiding; for, as Rogers asks, "What is not

visible to a poet's eye?" If, therefore, in neglecting this or that point in any particular bird's economy, a poet should seem deficient in that observation or spirit of inquiry by which, Faber tells us,

"The bonds of sympathy are drawn more close

Between the inferior creatures and the heart,
Whether it be birds upon the spray”

or anything else, he cannot generously be charged with any universal want of sympathy with Nature. Crabbe, for instance, was deplorably deficient in his acquaintance with vultures. But no poet knew more about turkeys than he did. Errors and omissions, trivial in themselves, may of course gather bulk and importance by all trending in one direction; but as regards each individually, it should be remembered by the prosaic that poets are given to "headstrong allegories," and that, after all, circumscribed subjects are not fit for poets. Elephants may, if they like, pick up pins, but they derogate from their dignity in doing so.

In dealing with birds in general, the poets have a more appropriate theme. "The eagle pinion" of the Muse can sweep in more open sky, and her "eagle eye" cover at a glance more spacious provinces. The feathered tribes therefore pass in review before the poets not only "each after his kind," but massed "by their tribes"

"As when the total kind

Of birds, in orderly array, on wing,

Came summoned over Eden, to receive

Their names of Adam;"

and, indeed, the poets even exceed the liberal provision of Nature, for they have

66 'Besides, some vocalists without a name.”

Describing the fifth day's work of the Creation, Milton, surveying group by group, the "fowl that fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven," presents in an admirable series of passages the eyrie-building birds of