May Poets and Birds. 1 3 7 



been cheered by it, and his labor lightened ? All the 

 poets, without exception, who have written of what is 

 charming and beautiful in Nature, have spoken lovingly 

 of singing-birds ; and therefore it may be presumed that 

 the great multitude of ' poets who have never penned 

 their inspiration/ and the still greater multitude who, 

 without being mute poets, have nevertheless some share 

 of poetic faculty or feeling, do all take pleasure in this 

 simple sylvan music. In aviaries it easily becomes over- 

 powering, but in the open woods it is mellowed by many 

 various distances ; and as there is a perspective in what 

 we see there, as the trees at a distance mingle a thousand 

 various tints into a quiet harmony of color, so do the 

 songs of a thousand birds mix together into a delicious 

 indistinguishable warbling, of which the most perfect 

 ear could never analyze the elements. And just as 

 some one branch or leaf will detach itself brilliantly in 

 the sunshine from the rich mystery that lies behind it, 

 so will the voice of one songster pipe clearly over all 

 the rest till it is lost again in the pervading atmosphere 

 of sound. 



Every one who cares for old poetry will remember 

 the stanzas in Chaucer's ' Court of Love/ where he 

 makes all the birds 'sing religiously in May, one of 

 the quaintest and prettiest of his fancies, but worked 

 out too fully in detail to admit of any complete quota- 

 tion. Here are just a couple of stanzas as specimens of 

 the whole : 



* " Te deum amoris" sang the throstel cocke ; 

 Tuball himself, the first musician, 



