enchantment” — and has been thus admirably rendered in English 
asonante by Denis Florence Maccarthy: — 
‘‘ Scarce had the heron dwindled to a speck 
On the far sky, when from about the neck 
Of a gerfalcon 1 unloosed the band 
Which held his hood ; a moment on my hand 
I soothed the impatient captive, his dark brown 
Proud feathers smoothing with caressings down ; 
While he, as if his hunger did surpass 
All bounds, picked sharply on his bells of brass. 
Scarce were they back restored to light, 
He and another, when in daring dight 
They scaled heaven’s vault, the vast void space where play 
In whirling dance the mote-beams of the day. 
Then down the deserts of the wind they float, 
And up and down the sky 
One flies away as the other swoopeth nigh ; 
And then the ashen-colour’d boat 
(An ashen-colour’d boat it surely were, 
That heron, that through shining waves of air 
Furrow’d its way to fields remote) 
Resolving to be free and not to fliil. 
Although alone it saileth now. 
Of feet made oars, of curved beak a prow. 
Sails of its wings, and rudder of its tail 
Poor wretched heron, said I then, thy strife 
’Gainst two opposing ills, are of my life 
Too true an image ; since it is to-day 
Of two distinct desires the hapless prey. 
’Gainst this, ’gainst that, as either doth assail, 
It furl’d its wing, and droop’d its languid sail. 
And placing its dazed head beneath the one. 
Trusting to fortune, like a plummet stone 
Straight down it fell, we, looking from afar. 
Saw it descending, an incarnate star 
Through the dark sky. 
With the pursuing falcons ever nigh.” 
Descriptions of this sport may be found in the works of several 
of our English dramatists, as Thomas Heywood, IMassinger, and 
Shakespeare, but for poetic beauty and truthful imagery I have 
met with none that can compare -with the passage just quoted from 
Calderon. With this I will conclude. If my remarks have ex- 
ceeded the limits wdiich I had originally proposed, it is to be hoped 
that, in the estimation of my readers, the interest of the subject 
may justify their length. 
