OMENS FROM BIRDS 3 1 1 



and direct messenger from heaven. Two such birds 

 might occasionally appear together in particular cir- 

 cumstances, such as the two eagles which appeared 

 to the Greeks at Aulis when under the joint com- 

 mand of Agamemnon and Menelaus. The true 

 spirit of bird-augury is given in Coleridge's c Ancient 

 Mariner* more completely than even in the many 

 passages in which Virgil treats of it. The circum- 

 stances in which the albatross appeared, were just 

 those in which such a sign appears to the minds of 

 men. The ship was 'in the land of the ice and of 

 fearful sounds, where no living thing was to be seen.' 

 Then the sailors saw the solitary bird of omen : 



At length did cross an albatross ; 



Through the fog it came 

 As if it had been a Christian soul, 



We hailed it in God's name.* 



Like the Japanese hawk, it would not leave the 

 ship : 



' In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud, 



It perched for vespers nine, 

 Whiles all the night through fog-smoke white, 

 Glimmered the bright moonshine.' 



The whole action of the poem turns on the ' accepta- 

 tion ' of the omen by the sailors, and their subsequent 



