NATURE AND THE POETS. 113 



law to go trouting in November. The pelican is not 

 a wader any more than a goose or a duck is, and the 

 golden robin or oriole is not a bird of autumn. This 

 stanza from "The Skeleton in Armor" is a strik- 

 ing one : 



" As with his wings aslant, 

 Sails the fierce cormorant, 

 Seeking some rocky haunt, 



With his prey laden, 

 So toward the open main, 

 Beating to sea again, 

 Through the wild hurricane, 

 Bore I the maiden." 



But unfortunately the cormorant never does anything 

 of the kind ; it is not a bird of prey : it is web- 

 footed, a rapid swimmer and diver, and lives upon 

 fish, which, it usually swallows as it catches them. 

 Virgil is nearer to fact when he says : 



" When crying cormorants forsake the sea . 

 And, stretching to the covert, wing their way." 



But cormorant with Longfellow may stand for any 

 of the large rapacious birds, as the eagle or the con- 

 dor. True, and yet the picture is purely a fanciful 

 one, as no bird of prey sails with his burden ; on the 

 contrary he flaps heavily and laboriously, because he 

 is always obliged to mount. The stress of the rhyme 

 and metre are of course in this case very great, and it 

 is they, doubtless, that drove the poet into this false 

 picture of a bird of prey laden with his quarry. It 

 *s an ungracious task, however, to cross-question the 

 gentle Muse of Longfellow in this manner. He is a 

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