BIRDS AND POETS 
I 
BIRDS AND POETS 
“In summer, when the shawes be shene, 
And leaves be large and long, 
It is full merry in fair forest 
To hear the fowles’ song. 
The wood-wele sang, and wolde not cease, 
Sitting upon the spray ; 
So loud, it wakened Robin Hood 
In the greenwood where he lay.’ 
ie might almost be said that the birds are all 
birds of the poets and of no one else, because it 
is only the poetical temperament that fully responds 
to them. So true is this, that all the great orni- 
thologists — original namers and biographers of the 
birds — have been poets in deed if not in word. 
- Audubon is a notable case in point, who, if he had 
not the tongue or pen of the poet, certainly had the 
eye and ear and heart— “the fluid and attaching 
character ” — and the singleness of purpose, the en- 
thusiasm, the unworldliness, the love, that charac- 
terize the true and divine race of bards. 
So had Wilson, though perhaps not in as large a 
measure ; yet he took fire as only a poet can. While 
