76 WOODLANDERS AND FIELD FOLK 



They issue forth as very devils, and, like wide- 

 winged spirits of the night, sail about seeking 

 whom they may devour. 



Poets write by day, and owls fly by night; and, 

 doubtless, Gray and his school have their opinion 

 of owls from staring at stuffed specimens in glass 

 cases, or at the living birds surprised in the full light 

 of day, when they will be seen blinking, nodding, 

 and hissing at each other, very unlike the wise 

 representatives of Minerva. Christopher North is 

 the only writer who has done justice to owls or 

 justice to poets, for the matter of that by his 

 denunciation of their epithets and false images. 

 He knew well that the white owl never mopes, but 

 holds its revels through the live-long night, when all 

 else is hushed and still. Most birds are stoics com- 

 pared to owls, and those who cultivate their acquaint- 

 ance know that they have no time wherein to make 

 their poetic complaints to the moon. Poets should 

 not meddle with owls. Shakespeare and Words- 

 worth alone understood them ; by all else they have 

 been scandalously libelled from Virgil to the Poet 

 Close. 



If you would see the midday siesta of these birds, 

 climb up into some hay-mow. There, in an angle of 

 the beam, you will see their owlships, snoring and 

 blinking wide their great round eyes. Their duet 

 is the most unearthly, ridiculous, grave noise con- 



