FOREWORD 



tures, the storks and cranes, or the clamorous sea-birds 

 and the screaming hawk. These suited better the rugged, 

 warlike character of the times, and the simple, powerful 

 souls of the singers themselves. Homer must have heard 

 tlie twittering of the swallows, the cry of the plover, the 

 voice of the turtle (dove), and the warble of the nightin- 

 gale; but they were not adequate symbols to express what 

 he felt or to adorn his dieme. i^schylus saw in the eagle 

 the 'dog of Jove,' and his verse cuts like a sword with 

 such a conception. 



"It is not because the old bards were less as poets, 

 but that they were more as men. To strong, susceptible 

 characters, the music of nature is not confined to sweet 

 sounds. The defiant scream of the hawk circling aloft, 

 the wild whinney of the loon, the whooping of the crane, 

 the booming of the bittern, the loud trumpeting of the 

 migratory geese sounding down out of the midnight sky, 

 or the wild crooning of the flocks of gulls — are much 

 more welcome in certain moods than any and all mere 

 bird-melodies, in keeping as they are with the shaggy and 

 untamed features of ocean and woods, and suggesting 

 something like Richard Wagner music in the ornithologi- 

 cal orchestra." 



As the life of man grew less warlike and heroic, as the 

 humbler fireside virtues were honored and the amenities 

 of life were cultivated, it is true that poets sang of the 

 gentler, more beautiful aspects of nature. Wordsworth 

 wrote of the skylark, the cuckoo, and the throstle, Shel- 

 ley and Shakespeare of the skylark, Keats of the nightin- 

 gale and of goldfinches, Tennyson of the swallow and the 

 throstle. They were, however, all deeply sensitive to the 

 wilder phases of nature — to the scudding cloud, the dash- 



[xi] 



