40



Correspondence



ON BEING A BIRD ONE’S-SELF


It was in our Magazine, I think, that I was first honoured by-

being called a poet in so many words in print (in 1923) ; and this, and

the fact that you, who were thus kind, have been asking for copy,

emboldens me to write, much against my will, about myself, since I

cannot get the answer I want anywhere but in this Magazine, and a

poet is often—especially by himself !—compared to a bird. There is, I

think, a good deal in the comparison, for personally, when I have had

the fit on, I have known no more than a bird what I was going to say,

nor do I know whether I can write verse on a given subject any more

than a mocking or talking bird knows whether he can reproduce a given

sound that takes his fancy. There is also the element of rivalry common

to both birds and bards, and the inspiration gained from the opposite

sex—especially if remote, for poets do not seem to get inspiration from

their wives, and birds, we know, are apt to go off song when happily

mated. I, alas ! am now going off song, while likely to die a bachelor ;

but I am always the scientist first, and what I want to know is whether,

when one has the verse-fit on, one has knowledge of subjects not

obtained in the ordinary way. And as I have written mostly on birds,

the subject is linked to some extent with our study of them.


What I have found is that, having availed myself now and then of

poetic licence so far as to make statements which I should not have

made in prose, I have afterwards found that there was justification

for the same.


In writing “ Circe and the Wildfowl,” I talked of the swan singing

his own dirge while giving the well-known display, and thought that

here I was combining attributes of the Mute Swan and the Whooper,

which last has been known to sing—or rather trumpet—before its

death. But years after writing this piece in 1923, only a year or two

ago in fact, I saw an account in the correspondence columns of Country

Life of a Mute Swan, in two instances, uttering musical sounds before

its death, due in the one case to illness and in the other to injury.

So the old legend about the swan singing before death is proved in the

case of the most familiar and picturesque species.


Then, in the Nightingale’s speech in ££ The Masque of Birds,” I



