RAVENS IN SOMERSET 117 



to share the sight with him, and because no one 

 appeared he was miserable. 



I could well understand his feehng, and 

 have not ceased to envy him his good fortune. 

 Thinking, after leaving him, of the sublime con- 

 flict he had described, and of the raven's savage 

 nature, Blake's "Tiger, tiger, burning bright" 

 came to my mind, and the line;— 



Did He who made the lamb make thee ? 



We can but answer that it was no other ; that 

 when the Supreme Artist had fashioned it with 

 bold, free lines out of the blue -black rock, he 

 smote upon it with his mallet and bade it live 

 and speak ; and its voice when it spoke was in 

 accord with its appearance and temper — the 

 savage, human -hke croak, and the loud, angry 

 bark, as if a deep-chested man had barked like 

 a blood-hound. 



How strange it seems, when we come to think 

 of it, that the owners of great estates and vast 

 parks, who are lovers of wild nature and animal 

 life, and should therefore have been most anxious 

 to preserve this bird, have allowed it to be extir- 

 pated ! " A raven tree," says the author of the 



