MUTE SWAN. 157 



That Swans sang sweetly at the approach of death was, 



however, a popular idea from very early times. Callimachus, in 



his hymn upon the Island of Delos, says : — 



When from Pactolus' golden banks 

 Apollo's tuneful songsters, snowy Swans, 

 Steering their flight, seven times their circling course 

 Wheel round the island, carolling mean time 

 Soft melodj', the favourites of the Nine, 

 Thus ushering to birth with dulcet sounds 

 The God of Harmony and Sense, sev'n strings 

 Hereafter to his golden lyre he gave, 

 For ere the eighth soft concert was begun 

 He sprung to birth. 



Don's Callimachus, p. 115. 



^schylus alludes to the death-song of the Swan in his " Agamem- 

 non," where Clytemnestra, speaking of Cassandra, says : — 



She, like the Swan 

 Expiring, dies in melody. 



Shakespeare repeats the idea — 



I will play the Swan 

 And die in music. 



—Othello, v., 2. 



Tennyson tells us how the dying Swan " loudly did lament " — 



With an inner voice the river ran, 



Adown it floated a dying Swan, 



And loudly did lament 

 * * ^ * * * * 



The Wild Swan's death-hymn took the soul 

 Of that waste place with joy 

 Hidden in sorrow : at first to the ear 

 The warble was low, and full and clear ; 

 And floating about the under sky, 

 Prevailing in weakness, the coronach stole 

 Sometimes afar, and sometimes near ; 

 But anon her awful jubilant voice 

 With a music strange and manifold, 

 riow'd forth on a carol free and bold. 



and numerous other similar allusions might be given. 



By the Pythagorean doctrine of the Transmigration of Souls, 

 the bodies of Swans were allotted to departed poets. Thus Plato 

 makes Orpheus prefer the life of the Swan. Poets were said to 

 animate Swans, also, from the notion that they fly higher than any 

 other birds ; thus Hesiod distinguishes them by the epithet of 

 The lofty-flying Swans. 



In course of time the Swan became the common trope for a 

 bard : Horace calls Pindar " Dircaeum cygnum ; " and in one of 



