182 STORM AND WINTER. 
Le soir, la jeune fille, en tournant son fuseau, 
Tire encore de sa lampe un présage nouveau, 
Lorsque la méche en feu, dont la clarté s’émousse, 
Se couvre en petillant de noirs flocons de mousse. 
Mais la sécurité reparait 4 son tour— 
L’alcyon ne vient plus sur l’humide rivage, 
Aux tiédeurs du soleil étaler son plumage — 
L’air s’éclaircit enfin ; du sommet des montagnes, 
Le brouillard affaissé descend dans les campagnes, 
Et le triste hibou, le soir, au haut des toits, 
En longs gémissements ne traine plus sa voix. 
Les corbeaux méme, instruits de la fin de l’orage, 
Folatrent 4 l’envi parmi l’épais feuillage, 
Et, d’un gosier moins rauque, annongant les beaux jours, 
Vont revoir dans leurs nids le fruit de leurs amours.”’ 
“ The Georgies,”’ translated by Delille.* 
A being eminently electrical, the bird is more en rapport than 
any other with numerous meteorological phenomena of heat and 
magnetism, whose secrets neither our senses nor our appreciation can 
arrive at. He perceives them in their birth, in their early beginnings, 
even before they manifest themselves. He possesses, as it were, a 
kind of physical prescience. What more natural than that man, 
whose perception is much slower, and who does not recognize them 
* We subjoin Dryden’s version of the above passage (‘‘ Georgics,”” Book I.) :-— 
“ Wet weather seldom hurts the most unwise, 
So plain the signs, such prophets are the skies : 
The wary crane foresees it first, and sails 
Above the storm, and leaves the lowly vales ; 
The cow looks up, and from afar can find 
The change of heaven, and snuffs it in the wind. 
The swallow skims the river’s watery face, 
The frogs renew the croaks of their loquacious race. . . . 
Besides, the several sorts of watery fowls, 
That swim the seas, or haunt the standing pools; 
The swans that sail along the silver flood, 
And dive with stretching necks to search their food, 
Then lave their back with sprinkling dews in vain, 
And stem the stream to meet the promised rain. 
The crow, with clamorous cries, the shower demands 
And single stalks along the desert sands. 
The nightly virgin, while her wheel she plies, 
Foresees the storm impending in the skies. 
’ 
