Song Birds and Water Fowl 



certain June morning in Munich, when I went 

 through the Brandenburg gate, outside the city 

 limits, and explored the surrounding fields. 

 For the first time, I then enjoyed the unique 

 display of Chaucer's lark, with its soaring flight 

 and rapturous song. It was quite common 

 thereabouts, and the morning was one to kindle 

 all its musical spirit. Mounting slowly, yet 

 airily, and with a rapid fluttering of wings, in 

 an absolutely perpendicular ascent, as if scaling 

 an invisible ladder, he began, when a short 

 distance from the ground, and accompanying 

 his upward motion, to pour forth a delicious 

 and continuous effervescence of delight, until 

 he reached so high a point that he became 

 only a throbbing vocal atom in the distant 

 blue ; where, poised upon the very climax of 

 his ecstasy, ensphered in the irradiation of his 

 wild and glittering notes, he uttered his im- 

 passioned heart in such a thrilling lyric chant 

 as could not fail to hold the listener spell- 

 bound and amazed. The best that poetry can 

 say of the lark has been expressed in Shelley's 

 famous apostrophe, which, in its entirety, is the 

 most breathless and delicious of his minor 

 poems, a gem among the classics. 



This famous vocalist is an instance, not ex- 

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