THE BLACKBIRD. 
6 3 
Draw yourself up from the light of the moon 
And let them pass, as they will too soon, 
With the bean-flower’s boon, 
And the Blackbird’s tune, 
And May and June!” 
In any country walk the Blackbird hopping under a hedge or flitting down it in 
fear is a familiar sight. It would often escape unnoticed, but its scream of alarm at 
once betrays it. Its brother, the ring-ousel, has an unpleasant habit, when disturbed 
during early summer in the stony solitudes of the north, where it loves to build, of 
sitting on a wall or rock and clucking and whistling and flying distractedly round 
the intruder upon its domain, probably a gentle angler who only wishes to be left 
in peace while he makes a cast or two in the neighbouring stream. We have never 
known the timid Blackbird do this. Matthew Arnold beautifully speaks of the bird 
as fearless when the dreaming, inoffensive Scholar Gipsy of his poem passes through 
the scenery around Oxford, every feature in his description of it being dear to the 
old University man who has so often wandered pensively among the same wood¬ 
lands. The stanza is, however, so intrinsically excellent that it may well end our 
account of the Blackbird— 
“ In autumn, on the skirts of Bagley Wood, 
Where most the gipsies by the turf-edged way 
Pitch their smoked tents, and every bush you see 
With scarlet patches tagg’d, and shreds of grey, 
Above the forest-ground called Thessaly, 
The Blackbird picking food 
Sees thee, nor stops his meal, nor fears at all! 
So often has he known thee past him stray 
Rapt, twirling in thy hand a withered spray 
And waiting for the spark from Heaven to fall.” 
