THE BIRD AS A TEACHER. 
17 
in the pages of the poets, are always suggestive of bright fancies and 
pure thoughts. Coleridge employs the albatross to teach a lesson of 
humanity. Tennyson finds a moral in the singing of the blackbird : — 
" Take warning I He that will not sing 
While yon sun prospers in the blue, 
Shall sing for want ere leaves are new, 
Caught in the frozen palms of Spring." 
A lesser minstrel, Michael Bruce, has invested the cuckoo with 
pathetic memories. Wordsworth sees a skylark, and is taught to 
cultivate a mood of thanksgiving and contentment: — 
" Joyous as morning, 
Thou art laughing and scorning ; 
Thou hast a nest, for thy love and thy rest: 
And, though little troubled with sloth, 
Drunken Lark ! thou wouldst be loath 
To be such a traveller as I. 
Happy, happy liver ! 
With a soul as strong as a mountain river. 
Pouring out praise to th' Almighty Giver, 
Joy and jollity be with us both ! 
Hearing thee, or else some other, 
As merry a brother, 
I on the earth will go plodding on, 
By myself, cheerfully, till the day is done. " 
Even the green linnet, modest singer that he is, can awaken the 
poet's thought, and draw from him an expression of the sense of 
happiness his song inspires : — 
" While birds, and butterflies, and flowers 
Make all one band of paramours. 
Thou, ranging up and down the bowers, 
Art .sole in thy employment ; 
A life, a presence like the air. 
Scattering thy gladness without care, 
Too blest with any one to pair. 
Thyself thy own enjoyment." 
In truth, we may reasonably ask. What would the poets have done 
without the birds ? How many happy images should we have missed ! 
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