OMENS FROM BIRDS 3 1 1 



and direct messenger from heaven. Two such birds 

 might occasionally appear together in particular cir- 

 cumstances, such as the two eagles which appeared 

 to the Greeks at Aulis when under the joint com- 

 mand of Agamemnon and Menelaus. The true 

 spirit of bird-augury is given in Coleridge's ' Ancient 

 Mariner' more completely than even in the many 

 passages in which Virgil treats of it. The circum- 

 stances in which the albatross appeared, were just 

 those in which such a sign appears to the minds of 

 men. The ship was * in the land of the ice and of 

 fearful sounds, where no living thing was to be seen.' 

 Then the sailors saw the solitary bird of omen : 



At length did cross an albatross ; 



Through the fog it came 

 As if it had been a Christian soul, 



We hailed it in God's name.' 



Like the Japanese hawk, it would not leave the 

 ship : 



' In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud, 



It perched for vespers nine, 

 Whiles all the night through fog-smoke white, 

 Glimmered the bright moonshine.' 



The whole action of the poem turns on the ' accepta- 

 tion ' of the omen by the sailors, and their subsequent 



