BIRDS OF THE POETS 



CHAPTER XIV 



Birds of Shakespeare, Byron, Keats, Sheeley and Burns. 



Pre-eminence of Dante, Wordsworth and Tennyson as 



Ornithoeogists. The Aneviism of Waet Whitman. Francis 



Thompson and John Masefield in Relation to Birds. 



The attitude of our poets to the birds of their 

 native land is always a matter of interest. We 

 take it rather for granted that all poets must 

 needs love birds as an aspect of nature which they 

 could not well afford to neglect. This, however, 

 is not strictly the case. Of course no one of our 

 greatest writers has failed to use avian figures 

 from which to draw an illustration or to make 

 graphic a line. But it is somewhat striking to 

 note how few of the immortals appear to have 

 studied a given species in order to show us some- 

 thing of the inner mystery of its being, of necessity 

 invisible to the common eye. Indeed, in this 

 respect, birds have fared far worse than trees and 

 flowers. 



Milton for example, gives us little, and Browning 

 even less, the latter confining himself largely to 

 dogs so far as animated nature goes. Shakes- 

 peare, of course, who has taken all knowledge 

 to be his province, provides, from time to time, 

 some exquisite little vignette drawn obviously 

 on the spot : — 



" This guest of siimmer. 

 The temple-haunting martlet does approve 

 By his loved mansioury that the heaven's breath 

 Smells wooingly here : no jetty, frieze 

 Buttress, nor coigne of vantage, but this bird 

 Hath made his pendent bed." 



144 



