THE LANGUAGE OF BIRDS. 
141 
Sport among the feathered choir, 
On the verdant banks of Loire ; 
Skim Garonne's majestic tide, 
Where Bordeaux adorns his side ; 
'Cross the towering Pyrenees, 
'Mid myrtle groves, and orange trees ; 
Enter then the wild domain. 
Where wolves prowl round the flocks of Spain ; 
Where silk- worms spin, and olives grow, 
And mules plod surely on and slow ; 
Steering thus for many a day, 
Far to south our course away. 
From Gibraltar's rocky steep 
Dashing o'er the foamy deep. 
We'd rest at length, our journey o'er. 
On sultry Afric's fruitful shore ; 
Till vernal gales should gently play. 
To waft us on our homeward way. 
Another motive I had for presenting the swallow 
next to the nightingale is, that, as the latter leaves us 
the end of August, the former quits us in September ; 
we thus (if we choose to carry our fancy so far) may 
imagine that the swallow, grieving at the departure 
