12 BIRDS AND POETS 



throat ! trembling throat ! 

 Sound clearer through the atmosphere t 

 Pierce the woods, the earth ; 

 Somewhere listening to catch you, must be the one I toant. 



Shake out, carols ! 

 Solitary here — the night's carols ! 

 Carols of lonesome love ! Death's carols ! 

 Carols under that lagging, yellow, waning m^on ! 

 Oh, under that moon, where she droops almost down into the sea ! 

 reckless, despairing carols. 



But soft ! sink low ! 

 Soft ! let me Just murmur ; 

 And do you wait a moment, you husky-noised sea ; 

 For somewhere I believe I heard my mate responding to me, 

 So faint — / must be still, be still to listen ! 

 But not altogether still, for then she might not come immediately to 



Hither, my love I 

 Here I am ! Here ! 



With this Just-sustained note I announce myself to you ; 

 This gentle call is for you, my love, for you. 



Bo not be decoyed elsewhere I 

 That is the whistle of the wind — it is not my voice; 

 That is the fluttering, the fluttering of the giray ; 

 Those are the shadows of leaves. 



darkness ! Oh in vain ! 

 Oh I am very sick and sorrowful. 



The bird that occupies the second place to the 

 nightingale in British poetical literature is the sky- 

 lark, a pastoral bird as the Philomel is an arboreal, 



— a creature of light and air and motion, the com- 

 panion of the plowman, the shepherd, the harvester, 



— whose nest is in the stubble and whose tryst is 

 in the clouds. Its life affords that kind of contrast 



