52 THE RIVER-SIDE NATURALIST. 



And Mrs. Hemans : 



" ' What is that, mother ? ' ' The swan, my love ; 

 He is floating down from his native grove ; 

 Death darkens his eye and unplumes his wings, 

 Yet his sweetest song is the last he sings.' " 



Byron also says in il The Isles of Greece : " 



"There, swan-like, let me sing and die." 

 And Tennyson, in his " Ode to the Dying Swan/' says : 



" The wild swan's death-hymn took the soul 

 Of that waste place with joy." 



We do not suppose for a moment that any one of these 

 poets ever heard this death-song. It is only perpetuating 

 a myth which had its origin in the supposition that the 

 soul of Orpheus was transmigrated into a swan. The fol- 

 lowing lines give a much more beautiful application : 



"The silver swans, no more than other fowl, 



With tuneful notes, presage impending death ; 



The notion of their dying tuneful breath 

 Was meant as emblem of a pious soul ; 

 Such, whose fair life, white as their snowy down, 



Not stain'd with the opprobrious marks of vice, 



Arriving at the gates of Paradise, 

 Their end, with joyful resignation crown." 



The swan has no song, but the wild swan has a loud 

 kind of trumpeting voice, which, when oft repeated by a 

 large flock, has somewhat of a musical note, and has been 

 compared to a pack of hounds in full cry. 



In the fourth edition of Yarrell's " British Birds," edited 

 by Mr. Howard Saunders, there is an interesting account 

 of the mute swan, and the swans' marks of the various 

 proprietors and corporations who possess these birds. 

 The swans on the Thames, i.e., to a certain distance, 

 belong chiefly to the Queen, the Vintners', and the Dyers' 

 Companies. 



The corporations of different towns have also privileges 

 in connection with swans Norwich, for instance, where 

 they collect a certain number and fatten them for the table, 



