The Birds of Shakespeare 
We watch the bird’s ungainly gait on land 
and are told that 
All the water in the ocean 
Can never turn the swan’s black legs to white, 
Although she lave them hourly in the flood.? 
The perfect stillness of the surface of a 
sheet of water is marked by 
The swan’s down-feather, 
That stands upon the swell at full of tide 
And neither way inclines.” 
Again, we watch 
A swan 
With bootless labour swim against the tide 
And spend her strength with overmatching waves.® 
The time-honoured legend that the 
‘‘death-divining swan” utters a musical 
note or wail at the time of dying is re- 
peatedly alluded to by the poet, and some- 
times as if it were a reality. Lucrece, at 
her approaching death, like a 
Pale swan in her watery nest, 
Begins the sad dirge of her certain ending.* 
1 Titus Andronicus, Iv. i. 101. 
2 Antony and Cleopatra, wi... 48. °3 Henry VIJ.1.1v. 19. 
4 Lucrece, 1611. Chaucer had already chronicled “the 
86 
