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For no gray-beards are we,
To be foiled in our glee;

But boys who will have our own way.

Translation of MITCHELL

SWALLOWS.

FROM "SALMONIA."

Hal. While we have been conversing, the May-flies, which were in such quantities, have become much fewer; and I believe the reason is, that they have been greatly diminished by the flocks of swallows which everywhere pursue them. I have seen a single swallow take four, in less than a quarter of a minute, that were descending to the water.

Poict. I delight in this living landscape! The swallow is one of my favorite birds, and a rival of the nightingale; for he cheers my sense of seeing as much as the other does my sense of hearing. He is the glad prophet of the year—the harbinger of the best season: he lives a life of enjoyment among the loveliest forms of Nature. Winter is unknown. to him; and he leaves the green meadows of England, in autumn, for the myrtle and orange groves of Italy, and for the palms of Africa. He has always objects of pursuit, and his success is secure. Even the beings selected for his prey are poetical, beautiful, and transient. The ephemeræ are saved by his means from a slow and lingering death in the evening, and killed in a moment, when they have known nothing of life but pleasure. He is the constant destroyer of insects--the friend of man; and, with the stork and ibis, may be regarded as a sacred bird. This instinct, which gives him his appointed seasons, and teaches him always when and where to move, may be regarded as flowing from a Divine Source; and he belongs to the Oracles of Nature, which speak the awful and intelligible language of a present Deity.

SIR HUMPHREY DAVY.

66

LINES

FROM THE POLYOLBION."

When Phoebus lifts his head out of the winter's wave,
No sooner doth the earth her flowery bosom brave;
At such time as the year brings on the pleasant spring,
But hunts-up to the morn the feather'd sylvans sing;
And in the lower grove, as on the rising knole,
Upon the highest spray of every mounting pole

Those choristers are perch'd, with many a speckled breast;
Then from her burnish'd gate the goodly glittering East

Gilds every lofty top, which late the humorous night
Bespangled had with pearl, to please the morning's sight;
On which the mirthful choirs, with their clear, open throats,
Unto the joyful morn so strain their warbling notes,
That hills and valleys ring, and even the echoing air
Seems all composed of sounds about them everywhere.
MICHAEL DRAYTON, 1563-1631.

THE BLACK COCK.

Good-morrow to thy sable beak,
And glossy plumage, dark and sleek-
Thy crimson moon and azure eye-
Cock of the heath, so wildly shy!
I see thee slowly cowering through
That wiry web of silver dew,
That twinkles in the morning air,
Like casement of my lady fair.

A maid there is in yonder tower,
Who, peeping from her early bower,
Half shows, like thee, with simple wile,
Her braided hair and morning smile.
The rarest things, with wayward will,
Beneath the covert hide them still;
The rarest things, to light of day
Look shortly forth, and break away.

One fleeting moment of delight
I warmed me in her cheering sight,
And short, I ween, the time will be
That I shall parley hold with thee.

Through Snowdon's mist red beams the day;
The climbing herd-boy chants his lay;
The gnat-flies dance their sunny ring;
Thou art already on the wing.

JOANNA BAI. LIE.

TO THE MOCKING-BIRD.

Wing'd mimic of the woods! thou motley fool,
Who shall thy gay buffoonery describe?
Thine ever-ready notes of ridicule

Pursue thy fellows still with jest and gibe:
Wit, sophist, songster, Yorick of thy tribe,

Thou sportive satirist of Nature's school,
To thee the palm of scoffing we ascribe,
Arch mocker, and mad Abbot of Mis-Rule!
For such thou art by day-but all night long
Thou pour'st a soft, sweet, pensive, solemn strain,
As if thou didst in this thy moonlight song
Like to the melancholy Jacques complain--
Musing on falsehood, folly, vice, and wrong,
And sighing for thy motley coat again.

RICHARD HENRY WILDE.

THE BOB-O-LINKUM.

Thou vocal sprite-thou feathered troubadour!
In pilgrim weeds through many a clime a ranger,
Com'st thou to doff thy russet suit once more,

And play in foppish trim the masking stranger?
Philosophers may teach thy whereabout and nature,
But, wise as all of us, perforce, must think 'em.
The school-boy best hath fix'd thy nomenclature,
And poets, too, must call thee "Bob-o-linkum !"

Say, art thou long 'mid forest glooms benighted,
So glad to skim our laughing meadows over--
With our gay orchards here so much delighted,
It makes thee musical, thou airy rover?
Or are those buoyant notes the pilfer'd treasure
Of fairy isles, which thou hast learn'd to ravish
Of all their sweetest minstrelsy at pleasure,
And, Ariel-like, again on men to lavish?

They tell sad stories of thy mad-cap freaks,
Wherever o'er the land thy pathway ranges;
And even in a brace of wandering weeks,

They say alike thy song and plumage changes;
These both are gay; and when the buds put forth,
And leafy June is shading rock and river,

Thou art unmatch'd, blithe warbler of the North,
While through the balmy air thy clear notes quiver.

Joyous, yet tender, was that gush of song,

Caught from the brooks, where 'mid its wild flowers smiling, The silent prairie listens all day long,

The only captive to such sweet beguiling;

Or didst thou, flitting through the verdurous halls,
And column'd isles of western groves symphonious,
Learn from the tuneful woods rare madrigals,

To make our flowering pastures here harmonious?

Caught'st thou thy carol from Ottawa maid,

Where through the liquid fields of wild rice plashingBrushing the ears from off the burden'd blade,

Her birch canoe o'er some lone lake is flashing?

Or did the reeds of some savanna South,

Detain thee while thy northern flight pursuing, To place those melodies in thy sweet mouth,

The spice-fed winds had taught them in their wooing?

Unthrifty prodigal! is no thought of ill

Thy ceaseless roundelay disturbing ever?
Or doth each pulse in choiring cadence still
Throb on in music till at rest forever?
Yet now in 'wilder'd maze of concord floating,
"Twould seem that glorious hymning to prolong,
Old Time, in hearing thee, might fall a-doating,
And pause to listen to thy rapturous song!

CHARLES FENNO HOFFMAN.

THE OWL.

High rides the moon amid the fleecy clouds,
That glisten as they float athwart her disk;
Sweet is the glimpse that for a moment plays
Among these mouldering pinnacles; but hark
That dismal cry! it is the wailing owl,

Night long she mourns, perched in some vacant niche,
Or time-rent crevice; sometimes to the woods

She bends her silent, slowly-moving wing,
And on some leafless tree, dead of old age,
Sits watching for her prey; but should the foot
Of man intrude into her solemn shades,
Startled, he hears the fragile, breaking branch
Crash as she rises; farther in the gloom

To deeper solitude she wings her way.

10

REV. JAMES GRAHAME.

EXTRACT.

FROM JOURNAL OF A NATURALIST."

Rural sounds, the voices, the language of the wild creatures, as heard. by the naturalist, belong to, and are in concord with, the country only, Our sight, our smell may perhaps be deceived for an interval by conservatories, horticultural arts, and bowers of sweets; but our hearing can in no way be beguiled by any semblance of what is heard in the grove or the field, The hum, the murmur, the medley of the mead, is peculiarly its own, admits of no imitation, and the voices of our birds convey particular intimation, and distinctly notify the various periods of the year with an accuracy as certain as they are detailed in our calendars. The season of spring is always announced as approaching by the notes of the rookery, by the jingle or wooing accents of the dark frequenters of the trees; and that time having passed away, these contentions and cadences are no longer heard. The cuckoo then comes and informs us that spring has arrived; that he has journeyed to see us, borne by gentle gales in sunny days; that fragrant flowers are in the copse and the mead, and all things telling of gratulation and of joy; the children mark this well-known sound, spring out, and cuckoo! cuckoo! as they gambol down the lane; the very plow-boy bids him welcome in early morn. It is hardly spring without the cuckoo's song: and, having told his tale, he has voice for no more-is silent or away. Then comes the dark, swift-winged marten, glancing through the air, that seems afraid to visit our uncertain clime; he comes, though late, and hurries through his business here eager again to depart, all day long in agitation and precipitate flight. The bland zephyrs of the spring have no charms for them; but basking and careering in the sultry gleams of June and July, they associate in throngs, and, screaming, dash round the steeple or the ruined tower, to serenade their nesting mates; and glare and heat are in their train. When the fervor of summer ceases, this bird of the sun will depart. The evening robin, from the summit of some leafless bough or projecting point, tells us that autumn is come, and brings matured fruits, chilly airs, and sober hours; and he, the lonely minstrel that now sings, is understood by all. These four birds thus indicate a separate season, have no interference with the intelligence of the other, nor could they be transposed without the loss of all the meaning they convey, which no contrivance of art could supply; and, by long association, they have become identified with the period, and in peculiar accordance with the time.

J. L. KNAPP.

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