1 1 2 The Poets and Nature. 



the brynie stream." Again in Darwin "Her playful sea- 

 horse wooes her soft command, Turns his quick ears, his 

 webbed claws expands." 



These are obviously the actual chargers that bore the 

 sea-god through the tumult of the ^Egean, with such " a 

 rushing voice of waters " as silenced for a while even the 

 thunders of an embattled Olympus. 



The sea-dog, again, is evidently no barking thing like 

 the horrible familiars of Scylla, for the hounds of the 

 Sicilian ogress are always mentioned specifically by name. 

 It is a horrible fish of the shark kind a dog-fish. Thus 

 Moore has the sea-dog " that doats upon the small sweet 

 fry that round him floats," and "that tracks the bloody 

 way " of the bark. In Faber they are the companions of 

 the seal 



1 ' And on the sandbanks of the bay 

 Sea-dogs and seals together lay, 

 As though the hot mist of noon were sweet 



After the day's cold gloom. 

 They slept like the dogs at the marble feet 



Of a Templar on his tomb." 



And from this we pass to the "sea-calf," which, in Savage 

 for instance, basks on the rock where seals congregate for 

 sunshine, and to the "sea-lion" that roams in Rogers "in 

 coral groves silent and dark," and so to the seals themselves. 



Poets oddly enough detest the seal. Keats only has it 

 sadly " in death, on the cold ice with piteous bark, lie full of 

 darts." But with the rest it is the " stinking " seal in Spenser 

 and others, and the " misshapen " seal. 



Sometimes we read " with seals and ores in sunless caverns 

 bred ; " at others the poets call them " ores " when they wish 

 to aggravate their " obscenity ; " and Leyden accuses them of 

 attacking children by throwing stones at them : 



" Nor ravenous seal, that suckleth on the shore 

 Her hairy young, unaw'd by eye of man ; 



