1 84 Gleanings from the 



Compare, too, the beautiful lines in "TEneid," xi. 

 72 1, feq. 



Among water-birds, Virgil does not dwell much 

 upon the halcyon, though it pofTefled what we 

 might fancy fo attractive a fet of myths. In a 

 picture of a fummer evening, he makes the mores 

 refound with the halcyon, the brakes with the 

 goldfinch, and tells how, in the beginning of fine 

 weather, the halcyons, beloved by Thetis, fpread 

 their wings on the more to the warm fun" 

 ("Georg.," iii. 338 ; i. 398). He has beautifully 

 touched the fad tale of the nightingale in two 

 paflages, relating in the firft how Philomela, after 

 ferving her dreadful banquet to Tereus, fled to 

 the wildernefs on the very wings with which me 

 had fluttered in her mifery round home ; and in 

 the fecond, comparing the fad ftrains of Orpheus, 

 bereft of his wife, to the lorn nightingale, with a 

 happy imitation of the tendernefs of the celebrated 

 paffage in the "Odyffey": 



" As the lone bird of fong in poplar lhades 

 Bewails her ravifhed young, which fome hard clown 

 Noting hath drawn, ftill fledglings, from their neft ; 

 So me weeps night-long, and from fome thick bough 

 Again renews her ftrain, her ftrain fo fad, 

 And fills wide filence with her forrowing plaints." 1 



Progne, Philomela's fitter, as well from the 

 myth as from being the familiar bird of houfe 

 and lake, is not forgotten. She is among the 

 birds harmful to bees, " bee-eaters and other birds 

 and Progne" (i.e. the chimney-fwallow), "marked 

 on her breaft by bloody hands" ("Georg.," iv. 14). 



1 "Eel.," vi. 80; "Georg.," iv. 511. 



