HALCYON LEGENDS 401 



down to that of Queen Victoria, always to turn its 

 bill to the quarter whence the wind was coming. 



" But how now stands the wind ? 

 Into what quarter peers my halcyon's bill ? " 



says Marlowe. And Marlowe's greater contem- 

 porary, Shakespeare, alluding to this same belief, 

 speaks of flatterers who 



" Renege, affirm, and turn their halcyon beaks 

 With every gale and vary of their masters." 



It will add, I think, a touch of interest to the 

 bird, in the eyes of all admirers of Tennyson, to 

 learn, as Sir Herbert Maxwell has told us in his 

 Memoirs of the Months, that two well-known lines 

 in In Memoriam, 



" And underneath the barren bush 

 Flits by the sea-blue bird of March," 



which had long puzzled naturalists as to what British 

 bird they could possibly be intended to describe, 

 were pronounced authoritatively by the poet, towards 

 the close of his life, to refer to the kingfisher. 

 Every possible, and many impossible birds the 

 swallow, the wheat-ear, the blue-tit among them 

 has been suggested as answering, more or less 

 generally more imperfectly, to the description. 

 Tennyson was, often, not too gracious in explaining 



2 c 



