SIDE LIGHTS ON BIRDS 



Still, even Tennyson, notwithstanding his usual 

 accuracy becomes from time to time problematical. 

 What were the birds in the high hall-garden 



' ' Crying, and calling ' Maud, Maud, Maud 1 ' " 



It is said that a lady once propounded this ques- 

 tion to the poet, suggesting a variety of inter- 

 esting feathered songsters. " Nothing of the 

 kind, madam," was the reply. " They were 

 merely rooks." 



It would be interesting if we could have a like 

 interpretation of a somewhat obscure passage 

 from " In Memoriam " — 



" When rosy plumelets tuft the larch 

 And rarely pipes the moimted thrush, 

 Or underneath the barren bush 

 Flits by the sea-blue bird of March." 



Now what is the ' ' sea-blue bird of March ? ' ' The 

 swallow has been hinted at, but although it may 

 be taken as the typical spring visitant, it is rather 

 a straining of poetical licence to describe its black- 

 purple colouring as sea-blue. The kingfisher, 

 again, has been put forward as supplying the 

 suggestion of sea-blue upon a summer's day. 

 But the objection arises that the kingfisher is not 

 in any special sense a bird of March. 



Still, we believe the authorities agree that 

 Tennyson had the kingfisher in mind. Sir 



Herbert Maxwell, discovered the expression 

 ' ' sea-blue bird of March " in relation to the 

 halcyon in one of the classics, and it may be 

 assumed that the poet adopted it from this source. 



It is perhaps noteworthy that Dante has never 

 been accounted a poet of Nature. Innumerable 

 quotations from Shakespeare, Tennyson, Words- 

 worth and other immortals are scattered broad- 

 cast throughout our literature, but the author 

 of the ' ' Divine Comedy " is rarely named as 

 being concerned with such mundane things as 



148 



