4 BIRDS AND POETS 



quate symbols to express what he felt or to adorn 

 his theme, ^schylus saw in the eagle " the dog of 

 Jove," and his verse cuts like a sword with such a 

 conception. 



It is not because the old bards were less as poets, 

 but that they were more as men. To strong, sus- 

 ceptible characters, the music of nature is not con- 

 fined to sweet sounds. The defiant scream of the 

 hawk circling aloft, the wild whinney of the loon, 

 the whooping of the crane, the booming of the bit- 

 tern, the vulpine bark of the eagle, the loud trum- 

 peting of the migratory geese sounding down out 

 of the midnight sky ; or by the seashore, the coast of 

 New Jersey or Long Island, the wild crooning of 

 the flocks of guUs, repeated, continued by the hour, 

 swirling sharp and shrill, rising and falling like the 

 wind in a storm, as they circle above the beach or 

 dip to the dash of the waves, — are much more wel- 

 come in certain moods than any and all mere bird- 

 melodies, in keeping as they are with the shaggy 

 and untamed features of ocean and woods, and sug- 

 gesting something like the Richard Wagner music 

 in the ornithological orchestra. 



" Nor these alone whose notes 

 Nice-fingered art must emulate in vain, 

 But cawing rooks, and kites that swim sublime 

 In still repeated circles, screaming loud, 

 The jay, the pie, and even the boding owl. 

 That hails the rising moon, have charms for me," 



says Cowper. "I never hear," says Burns in one 

 of his letters, "the loud, solitary whistle of the cur- 

 lew in a summer noon, or the wild mixing cadence 



