BIRDS OF THE POET 



A true picture of the nesting of the house martin. 

 But these examples are few. 



Even from Keats and Shelley, notwithstanding 

 their abnormal sensitiveness to the finer vi- 

 brations from nature, we gain comparatively 

 little. Each is attracted by the song rather 

 than by the bird itself, and thus the nightingale 

 and the lark claim their main attention. Truly 

 the bird whose notes : — 



"Satiate the hungry dusk with melody." 



And of which it was written : — 



' ' The same which oft-times hath 

 Charmed magic casements opening on the foam 

 Of perilous seas in faery lands forlorn," 



said to be the most mystically musical lines in all 

 literature, can hardly complain of lack of ap- 

 preciation : and the skylark, again — the theme 

 of Shelley's world-famous ode, is amply treated. 

 But still it may be repeated that we hardly get 

 from Keats and Shelley the bird-pictures which 

 we fancy we have a right to expect. 



From Byron we look for little, and we are not 

 disappointed. When, in the person of Manfred, 

 he meets the devil on the summit of the Jungfrau, 

 and proceeds to bully him, he sees and presents 

 us with a striking picture of an eagle (probably the 

 golden) : 



" Thou winged and cloud-cleaving minister. 



Thou art gone 

 Where the eye cannot foUow thee, but thine 

 Still pierces downwards, onwards, and above 

 With a pervading vision." 



But the sombre genius is too deeply involved 

 with the turbulent evolution of his own somewhat 

 refractory soul to pay much attention to ornitho- 

 logy. 



From Burns, again, working in the open, and 

 essentially a poet of country Hfe, one might 

 reasonably have hoped for many intimate glimpses 



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