160 
WILD SCENES AND SONG-BIRDS. 
too, of evenings, " the wild disguise lias been apt to almost 
antick" them. 
" Cup us till the world goes round," 
was ever the favorite chorus of their mellow vespers. God 
bless them ! Poor Chaucer is not the only one of whom it 
might be said — 
" That mark upon his lip is wine !" 
The song-bird with its pipes a-wearj, sips, for refreshing, the 
fiery dews inspired of the sun. They, as well to awake the 
frost-bound blood or rouse the sacred madness, have quaffed 
at this 
" Thespian spring, 
Of which sweet swans must drink before they sing 
Their true-paced numbers and their holy lays." 
Not a strictly Washingtonian sentiment, by the way, but it 
will do, since Birds and Poets are accountable for it — ■ 
though so staid a Poet as Wordsworth talks about " Thou 
drunken Lark !" Birds are proverbially improvident and 
regardful of the injunction, " give thyself no thought for the 
morrow, what we shall eat, or what ye shall drink" — for with 
them " sufficient to the day is the joy thereof!" That therein 
Birds and Poets do most agree, the Lay of " The Flower 
and Leaf" shall bear us witness. The gentle Poet, idling 
through an embowered Dream-land, becomes 
" Ware of the fairest medler tree 
That ever yet in all my life I see. 
:iJ * H« * 
Wherein a goldfinch leaping pretilie 
Fro bough to bough." 
The little bird begins to sing 
" So passing sweetly, that by manifold 
It was more pleasaunt than I could devise." 
