Contrasts in Nature 
The co-existence of pleasure and pain, of 
joy and sorrow, met the poet even among the 
tender creatures in whose songs he delighted. 
He saw that the grief or suffering of one 
single songster in no perceptible degree 
quieted the carolling of the rest of the choir. 
All thy fellow-birds do sing, 
Careless of thy sorrowing : 
Even so, poor bird, like thee, 
None alive will pity me. 
He realised, as many another poet has also 
found, that there are times in which the 
joyous songs of birds may even sound 
harshly to human ears when the heart is 
bowed down with affliction. Thus he 
wrote of Lucrece : 
The little birds that tune their morning’s joy 
Make her moans mad with their sweet melody : 
For mirth doth search the bottom of annoy. 
‘You mocking birds,’ quoth she, ‘your tunes entomb 
Within your hollow-swelling feather’d breasts, 
And in my hearing be you mute and dumb: 
My restless discord loves no stops nor rests ; 
A woeful hostess brooks not merry guests.? 
1 Passionate Pilgrim, xxi. * Lucrece, 1107-1125. 
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