1 38 The Poets and Nature. 



"grampus," as in Darwin's poem on the "Economy of 

 Vegetation," in the striking passage that commences 



"So when enormous Grampus issuing forth 

 From the pale regions of the icy north, 

 Waves his broad tail and opes his ribbed mouth, 

 And seeks on winnowing fins the breezy south." 



Nor is it easier to explain why poets should have persisted 

 in thinking that whales lived on herrings 



1 ' A whale of moderate size will draw 

 A shoal of herrings down his maw ; " 



' ' With monstrous gape, 



Sepulchral whales devour 

 Shoals at a gulp ; " 



than that they should say three poets, at any rate " white 

 as whalebone." That it should be spoken of as "bound- 

 ing " is not consonant with whale dignity ; and when Mary 

 Howitt adds to Montgomery's irreverence by saying bound- 

 ing "like lambs" it seems to the ordinary mind that a 

 liberty is being taken with Behemoth, for even when at play 

 the giant should be taken seriously. 



" With gills pulmonic breathes the enormous whale, 

 And spouts aquatic columns to the gale ; 

 Sports on the shining wave at noontide hour, 

 And shifting rainbows crest the rising shower." 



This treatment is seemly; and "cumbrous," "belching," 

 "gulphing," " living islands," are all becoming epithets ; but 

 it is curiously significant of the common humanity that 

 poets share with us that they should always exult so pro- 

 digiously in man's triumphs over the whale. Just as with 

 the lien, nearly every time a poet talks of the whale "in 

 oily mail," he is sure to say something about its being 

 stranded, or harpooned, or hunted, or otherwise victimised, 

 by human beings. 



What an admirable poem that is of Mackay's on " The 



