I 5 8 love's meinie. 



And next, it was plain, 



That he, in the rain, 

 Was forced to sit dripping and bhnd. 

 While the Reed-warbler swung 

 In a nest, with her young 

 i8 Deep sheltered, and warm, from the wind. 



So our homes in the boughs 



Made him think of the House ; 

 And the Swallow, to help him invent, 

 Revealed the best way 



To economize clay, 

 24 And bricks to combine with cement. 



armour of the feathers against hail ; the down of them 

 against cold. See account of Feather-mail in ' Laws of 

 Fesole,' chap, vi., p. 77, with the first and fifth plates, and 

 Figure 15. 



15. Blind. By the beating of the rain in his face. In 

 hail, there is real danger and bruising, if the hail be worth 

 calling so, for the whole body ; while in rain, if it be rain 

 also worth calling rain, the great plague is the beating and 

 drenching in the face. 



16. Swung. Opposed to ' sit ' in previous line. The 

 human creature, though it sate steady on this unshakeable 

 earth, had no house over its head. The bird, that lived on 

 the tremblingest and weakest of bending things, had her 

 nest on it, in which even her infinitely tender brood were 

 deep sheltered and warm, from tlie -wind. It is impossible 

 to find a lovelier instance of pure poetical antithesis. 



20. House. Again antithetic to the perfect word ' Home ' 

 in the line before. A house is exactly, and only, half-way to 

 a ' home.' Man had not yet got so far as even that ! and had 

 lost, the chorus satirically imply, even the power of getting 

 the other half, ever, since his " She gave me of the tree." 



24. Bricks. The first bad inversion permitted, for "to 



