JUNE 349 



the nightingales sang. Why in colder climes do they 

 stop singing so much earlier in the year, and here they 

 sing well into midsummer ? With the exception of these 

 nightingales in favoured woods, the birds are very silent 

 in Italy in June. But the sounds are many frogs, 

 insects, the constant singing of the grasshoppers. Keats 

 says: 'The poetry of Earth is never dead. When all 

 the birds are faint with the hot sun and hide in cooling 

 trees, a voice will run from hedge to hedge about the new- 

 mown mead. That is the grasshopper's.' 



For associations with the South, there is nothing in 

 the way of sounds to equal the sad call of the little night- 

 owl or aziola, as the Italians call it. The following 

 colloquial poem of Shelley's, if not a gem amongst his 

 lyrics, expresses the tender affection we must all feel for 

 this little bird : 



' Do you not hear the aziola cry ? 

 Methinks she must be nigh,' 



Said Mary, as we sate 



In dusk, ere stars were lit or candles brought ; 

 And I, who thought 

 This Aziola was some tedious woman, 



Ask'd, Who is Aziola ? ' How elate 

 I felt to know that it was nothing human, 



No mockery of myself to fear or hate ! 

 And Mary sa'w my soul, 

 And laugh'd and said, ' Disquiet yourself not ; 

 Tis nothing but a little downy owl.' 



Sad aziola ! many an eventide 



Thy music I had heard 



By wood and stream, meadow and mountainside, 

 And fields and marshes wide, 

 Such as nor voice, nor lute, nor wind, nor bird, 



The soul ever stirr'd ; 

 Unlike, and far sweeter than them all. 

 Sad Aziola ! from that moment I 

 Loved thee and thy sad cry. 



