402 BIRD LIFE AT BINGHAIVTS MELCOMBE 



the meaning of a difficult passage in his poems to 

 an anxious inquirer. He had forgotten, he would 

 say, that he had ever written it ; his questioner had 

 better find out for himself what it meant, or put 

 any meaning that he liked upon it. It turns out, 

 in this instance, that the couplet was a literal transla- 

 tion of a fragment of Alcman, which referred to 

 the semi-fabulous halcyon, and was transferred by 

 Tennyson to the English kingfisher. "The sea- 

 blue bird of spring," a\nr6p<j>vpos em/oo? opw,* may 

 have been an accurate description enough of the 

 legend-laden halcyon, as it was conceived by Alcman 

 and other classical writers ; but it is not a happy 

 characterisation, for so close an observer of birds as 

 Tennyson, of the English kingfisher. The kingfisher 

 can hardly be said to be " sea-blue " ; it never " flits " 

 from bush to bush, but always dashes like an arrow 

 down-stream ; and it is, in no special sense, the 

 "bird of March." The poet had to find a rhyme 

 for his exquisite line 



" When rosy plumelets tuft the larch," 



* fiaiXe Srj /3d Ae Krjpv\o<s ctr/v, 

 os r ri Kv/mro? wOos d/x d\Kv6vc<rcri TTOT)TCU, 

 vrjA-eyes IT/TO/D X WV > a.X.nr6p<f>vpos etapos opvts. 

 " Would, aye, would that I were a cock halcyon, 

 Which flies over the dancing waves, with the hen halcyons, 

 Light of heart, the sea-dark bird of spring." 



