18 
SKYLARK AND NIGHTINGALE. 
how many delightful suggestions, and rare and pleasant fancies ! Who 
would wish to have been without Shelley's Skylark ? — 
" Sounds of vernal showers 
On the trickling grass, 
Rain-awakened flowers, 
All that ever was 
Joyons, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass. 
" Better than all measures 
Of delightful sound, 
Better than all treasures 
That in books are found. 
Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground 1 " 
Or who would not have regretted if he had been deprived of Keats' 
Nightingale i — 
" Thou wert not born for death, iujjuortal bird I 
No hungry generations tread thee down ; 
The voice I hear this passing night was heard 
In ancient days by emperor and clown : 
Perhaps the self -same song that found a path 
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home, 
She stood in tears amid the alien corn ; 
The same that ofttimes hath 
Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam 
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn." 
When Spenser seeks to convey to us an idea of enchanted or super- 
natural music, he tells us that 
" The joyous birds, shrouded in cheerful shade, 
Their notes unto the voice attempered sweet ; " 
as if a concert of sweet sounds were impossible without the melody of 
birds. Webster, the old dramatist, calls upon the robin and the wren 
to watch over the last home of sad humanity: — 
" Call for a robin redbreast, and tlie wren, 
Since o'er shady groves they hover, 
And with leaves of flowei-s do cover 
The friendless bodies of unburied men." 
When the bloom and sunshine of May make triad the heart of man. 
Tennyson represents the birds as sharing in the general mirth :— 
