May — Hymn of the Birds. 1 39 



XXVII. 



Hymn of the Birds to the Sun, by Gawin Douglas — The Birds hail the 

 Sun with Welcomes — How the Poets love the Birds — How the Bird- 

 catchers love them — The Mistletoe — St. Lambert's Poem of the Four 

 Seasons — Gentle Heartlessness — The Bird-catcher in Buffon — The 

 Work of Nest-building — Are Birds Architects or Masons ? — Magpies 

 — The Labor given to a Magpie's Nest — Thrush, Tom-tit, Linnet — 

 Greenfinch and Goldfinch — Wren — Excellent Arrangement of Wren's 

 Nest — Building a House — Building for Oneself — Varieties of Nest- 

 building — Raising and Fixing of Material — Adhesion of Martin's 

 Nests — Birds that like to be rocked in their Nests— The Cuckoo — 

 Poet-cuckoos — Birds and Plants — The Cuckoo-pint — Value of the 

 Common Arum for Artists. 



OF all the fine passages in old poetry concerning the 

 life of birds in Nature, the most magnificent is 

 the hymn of the birds to the Sun in Gawin Douglas's 

 prologue to the twelfth book of the ' Eneid.' I should 

 have been glad to abridge the quotation had it been 

 possible without spoiling it, but I find, as the reader will 

 also, that the series of verses beginning with the word 

 ' Welcome ' could not have their due effect if given by 

 themselves ; the mind needs to be led up to them and 

 tuned, to the proper poetical pitch before it can fully 

 enter into the fine spirit of the hymn itself. As for the 

 little difficulty with the old Scottish words it vanishes 



