168 WILD SCENES AND SONG-BIRDS. 



to wear. In the Bird, with its plain, brown plumes hid in 

 the lowly hawthorn, singing to the night, who does not see 

 a resemblance to the Kepublican Poet, in his coarse, simple 

 garb, retired beyond the reach of persecution to his humble 

 home, while, out of his darkness^ over all the world, 



" Prophetic echoes flung dim melody." 



"With so many and such singular points of coincidence be- 

 tween them, who can doubt but that the Poet felt them, and 

 that his mild spirit yearned, and was moved by the tender 

 drawing of affinities towards his tuneful Brother. He, 

 rather than poor Keats, might have passionately pleaded : 



" So let me be thy choir, and make a moan 



Upon the midnight hours. 

 Thy voice, thy lute, thy pipe, thy incense sweet, 



From swinged censers teeming ; 

 Thy shrine, thy grove, thy oracle, thy heat, 



Of pale-mouthed prophet dreaming." 



As is Milton, so is the Nightingale peculiarly the favorite 

 of the poets. They are regarded alike with a gentle and 

 deep affection. Kind old Spenser has expressed this for us 

 all, and for all time, concerning the Bird ; and the Poet and 

 the Bird are one. 



" Hence with the nightingale will I take parte, 

 That blessed byrd that spends her time of sleepe 

 In songs and plaintive pleas ." 



Other coincidences if possible, even yet more apparent 

 suggest themselves. 



" Nor that is not the lark, whose notes do beat 

 The vaulty heaven so high above our head." 



The thought of Shelley at once occurs in the high place 

 of that aerial melodist. Who has not, long ago, linked in- 



