The Poets' Birds

THEIR friends have claimed for the poets that they are the chief ministers and high priests of Nature. They are said to be in exceptional communion with her; to be her “ interpreters,” her “favorites,” and her “children.” Indeed, the poets have repeatedly claimed as much for themselves.

But, none the less, I fear that much might be found in English poetry to support any one who should say that, as a class, the bards are not only inadequately informed as to the ordinary objects in nature, but curiously unfair towards those which they profess to understand.

This holds good only of British poets, Tennyson excepted; for the poetry of America marks a perfectly new departure from the stereotyped, artificial, and unsympathetic treatment of natural objects which characterizes British verse. America, perhaps, is too large to tolerate prejudices, or it may he that a specific variation in the intellectual conditions of the West develops a corresponding variation in the poetic tone. Her poets cannot go to an antique heraldry for grotesque fancies about beasts which heralds had never heard of, nor to classical myths for whimsical ideas about birds which were unknown to Greece and Rome. They are protected, therefore, to a certain extent, from any “ hereditary taint ” of prejudice, and have fewer temptations than European poets towards the logicians’ “ fallacy from antiquity.” jBut this does not suffice to explain that universal kindliness towards “ the speechless world ” which is conspicuous in the works of Emerson, Longfellow, Lowell, Holmes, Bryant, and Whittier ; that tender gospel of sympathy, of which Buddha was the Messiah and Edwin Arnold is the latest evangelist. Now this sympathy, coextensive with Nature, which I find common to all the poets of America, is one of the rarest of traits in the poets of England. The latter, I notice (and I have carefully examined two hundred volumes of their verse), are seldom in true accord with Nature, and seldom, therefore, in her fullest confidence.

Science, as an American writer has said, is unsatisfactory, inasmuch as it does not permit sentiment in its treatment of natural objects ; but even conceding the essayist to be right, it is also certain that poetry is hardly more satisfactory when it shows an unnecessary disregard of scientific facts. All who love the poetry in Nature better than the poetry out of it will admit this.

Poetical license of course excuses much, and in homage to the true aim of poetry almost anything may he condoned. But even poetical license must confess to laws, and, like Nature herself in her most wayward moods, must never permit the extension of an idea except in the direction of its natural progression. It must he produced in a straight line only. There must be no kinks in it, no eccentric liberties taken. When Nature made a bat she availed herself of a lawful license ; but when poets call the bat “ a bird,” they go beyond the justifiable. If a bard is not content with merely saying that the eagle stares at the sun, but goes on to add that its sight pierces through the sun and beyond it, his extension is in a straight line ; or if another, describing the raven riding on the crest of the swiftly-moving storm, speaks of it as hastening the storm, there is an admissible and pleasing prolongation, so to speak, of the original idea. But when the vulture, because it is opposed to the dove in general character, is made (as by Savage) to chase the dove and catch it; or when, the sea having become calm, the sea-gulls begin (as in Mallet) to “warble,” we resent the liberty taken by the bard, for it is eccentric, and out of the regular plane of Nature’s procedure.

It will no doubt be also pleaded, in justification of poetical license, that the writers are often only pursuing “ points of high prescription,” and following up old tradition. The plea is admissible, for no one can be displeased with any effort to preserve the delightful fancies of antiquity. But the poets should sometimes save themselves by an aiunt, or at all events they should not go beyond the original myth. It is a poor compliment to the fable of the bird of paradise, that it sleeps on the wing, to stretch the same privilege, as Cowper does, to the swallow; nor is it respectful to the legend of the pelican to exaggerate her act into one of self-destruction. She fed her young from her breast, so tradition pretended, to save them from starvation. But she did not, obviously, give them “ her life’s blood,” for that would have precipitated the very catastrophe which the poor mother tried so painfully to avert. Now these, I take it, are abuses of tradition, and opposed to that tender, reverent trusteeship of old-world bird-lore which we look for in the poets. Let them, by all means, perpetuate the pretty “wisdom of the ancients.” But they must not add to it for their present purpose, nor take from it to suit their text.

Nor again, when following the fictions of Greece and Rome, does it look well in a poet that he should have no gold of his own to set their jewels in. The swan on the water is a thing of surpassing grace, yet what a sterile majority of our bards see in it only the fowl that sings before death ! Is there no poetry in the contemporary kingfisher, that it should never be anything but the “ brooding halcyon ” of the past ? Yet it would be as hard to find a poet who mentions the kingfisher in nature as one who does not mention it in fable. The real beauty of the swan’s life is almost ignored; the imaginary beauty of its death is hackneyed to absurdity.

Taking the bird-world alone, it is extraordinary with what direct loss of power and beauty the poets have neglected the opportunities which Nature offers them for simile and illustration, ornamental epithet or moral analogy. There are known to science more than three thousand species of birds. But poetry takes ken of a bare hundred, and of even these a third are so casually mentioned that, virtually, they are useless to the text, and, so far as they contribute any special significance, force, or beauty, almost any other birds might have taken their places. The treasures of the tropics are absolutely ignored, and, in fact, Asia, Africa, and America might not exist, for all the advantage their bird-wealth has been to British poets ; while Europe, except where its species are British species also, is similarly neglected. Taking foreign birds, we find only six, — the ostrich, bird of paradise, pelican, flamingo, ibis, and vulture, — and even these are only utilized to perpetuate half a dozen of those “ pseudodoxia ” which Sir Thomas Browne tried to demolish two centuries ago. The ostrich is still, with the poets, the “ silliest of the feathered kind, and formed of God without a parent’s mind; ” the bird of paradise, not having recovered its legs yet, sleeps on the wing, and hatches its eggs in mid-air ; the ibis still brandishes its “ spiral neck at snakes ; ” the pelican goes on “opening to her young her tender breast; ” and the vulture continues to “spring from the cliff upon the passing dove.” Such, then, may be said to be the sum of the English poets’ study of foreign bird-life (except in the case of cage-birds, such as cockatoos, macaws, canaries, parrots), the aggregate of the beauty they can find in the lessons taught and similes pointed by many hundreds of feathered things. The humming-birds, poems each one of them ; the magnificent hornbills, miracles of plumage; the sun-birds, a very regalia of feathered gems ; the astonishing trogons and their painted kin ; the glittering lories and toucans, creatures of paradise; the pheasants of Asia, cast in gold and silver, and jeweled on every feather ; the multitude of beautiful water-fowl that haunt the great rivers of the world, the Amazon and Nile and Ganges streams ; the wondrous birds of prey, the condors and lammergeyers of Alp and Andes, — all are wasted alike. Yet surely, if only for their surpassing beauty of plumage and form, their unrivaled power and speed, some of these deserve appreciative reference, instead of the stale old peacock, already plucked bald, and the still staler turtle-dove. So pressed for similes of beauty are the poets that they have all of them to turn again and again to the peacock’s tail, the turtle’s neck, and the swan’s breast, — to one or other they invariably go,— and never once think, apparently, of the myriads of lovely things that might brighten and beautify their verse, if they would only let their minds travel beyond “ the tame villatic fowl" of their homesteads.

Now, why is the poets’ range so unnecessarily and injuriously limited? In the case of the earliest poets the contemporary ignorance of zoölogy is sufficient explanation ; but for the rest, the same explanation cannot be accepted, unless we are to believe that poets are permitted to ignore what the prose writers of their own day knew well, which is irrational. It will of course be argued that the poets did not need more birds than they used, that they had enough birds, that they used only as many as they wanted, and so forth ; but unless poetry differs from prose in some essential manner not yet revealed, it is absurd to suppose that a choice of beauties would not have been resorted to, that monotony and imitation would not have been avoided, that a world of exquisite morals and illustrations would not have been utilized, had they been to hand. What craftsman, working on a thing of beauty, would not use beautiful materials, if heaped up round him, in preference to second-hand odds and ends, much the worse for wear and tear ? Indeed, to accept any other explanation is to accuse the poets of something worse than mere ignorance.

Moreover, from internal evidence, it is easy enough to show that, as a matter of fact, the poets were not satisfied with their repertory of fowls. Sometimes they try to compass variety by using different names for the same bird, for we find them singing mysteriously (to modern ears) of “ gleads,” “ puttocks,” “ernes,” “tiercels,” and so forth, when they had used the more familiar names sufficiently often. Or they make up new birds for themselves, like Spenser’s “shriks,” Milton’s night-ravens, Shelley’s death - birds, or Savage’s nightcrows ; or they go boldly into the birdland of fable, and eke out their stock with such “ fearful wild-fowl ” as the simurg and roc, gryphon and phœnix, popinjay, heydegre, martlet, and allerion.

Further evidence might, if needed, be found in the fact that where the poets are really at home with their birds they are careful to show it. Thus the hawks of sport are all nicely specified by their technical distinctions, and British gamebirds are enumerated without a single omission. The “ dove ” is also the wooddove, wood-pigeon, ring-dove, stock-dove, turtle-dove, and carrier-pigeon, while the barn-door fowl is accurately detailed into Chanticleer and Partlet, cock and hen, cockerel, capon, pullet, and chicken, — eight birds made out of two, or out of one. It is fairly evident, therefore, that the very limited range of the poets was not altogether optional with them ; for not only did they make the very most of the few birds they were sure of, but they invented others to increase the number, and it becomes difficult, except under the theory that they were ignorant of nature, to explain their reticence. But in the case of many of the poets, their ignorance, as I have said, was a misfortune, and not a fault, for, however disastrous it may have been, as depriving their poems of much beauty, variety, and power that they might otherwise have possessed, the door to the natural world was, in their day, only just ajar.

I will not, therefore, press this charge against the bards. Our loss was perhaps their misfortune. But my second charge, that of injustice to the birdworld, is far more serious. It also arises from ignorance, but ignorance of another degree. We can hardly quarrel with a poet for not writing about birds which he did not know of. But we can quarrel with him for not knowing about the birds which he did write of. And it is this second ignorance, therefore, this inner coil, that I complain of, and resent. For the larger offense, the neglect of the whole world’s ornithology, we can find palliation, or, at any rate, we may condone it with pity. But for the smaller, more concentrated neglect, I feel but little tenderness. The poets have wasted some two thousand exotic birds, — let that pass. But I feel it a duty to notice, in some detail, their unfair treatment of their seventy-six “ British species.”

The complete list1 stands as follows : albatross, blackbird, bullfinch, bittern, blackcock, buzzard, booby, cormorant, crane, cock, corn-crake, chaffinch, cuckoo, crow, chough, coot, curlew, duck, eagle, field-fare, fulmar, gull, goldfinch, goose,’ gannet, greenfinch, grouse, goshawk, heron, hobby, jackdaw, jay, kingfisher, kite, linnet, loon, merlin, magpie, martin, moor-hen, nightingale, night-jar, noddy, owls, ousel, osprey, peacock, plover, partridge, pheasant, ptarmigan, quail, raven, ring-dove, rook, robin, swan, swallow, skylark, sparrow, snipe, stone-chat, sand-lark, stock-dove, starling, sparrow-hawk, swift, thrush, turtledove, teal, white-throat, wren, woodpecker, woodcock, woodlark, wild-duck,

— seventy-six in all.

Now one of the first points to attract attention in this curious list is the presence of only seven sea-birds. What a collection to represent the feathered nations of the ocean and the sea-vexed coasts and cliffs ! The albatross, it is true, is used with notable effect in the Ancient Mariner, but what shall we say of the rest ?

The unhappy cormorant, perhaps because Milton began by saying the devil resembled it, is selected by Churchill as the very abomination of desolation (“ Let cormorants in churches make their nests ”), and is invariably misrepresented and maligned by the other poets as “ obscene,” “ greedy,” and “ ill-omened,” that inhabits caves which “ the dun seals ” share with it. The gannet is once mentioned by Scott as “flying,” and the fulmar once by Mallet as “ screaming,” while the loon, the booby, the noddy, and the “ soland-goose ” are each once referred to, to point a pleasantry. Such are the ocean-birds of the poets, and, except where “ sea-mews ” and “ sea - pies ” are thrown in (and sometimes very finely) as adjuncts of sea scenery, not another bird is mentioned. Not a word for the frigatebird,— though it does sleep on the wing,

— and barely a line for the stormy petrel, its name itself a tragedy! Is there not a real and grievous injustice doue here to the beautiful and noble birds that add grace and dignity even to the sea itself ?

Unjust, also, we must consider the treatment of the birds of prey. If the poets were contemptuous to the “fishers of the sea,” they are prejudiced against “ the pirates of the sky.”

These are represented in Britain, according to the bards, by the eagle, hawk, falcon, buzzard, goshawk, hobby, osprey, sparrow-hawk, and kite. The eagle is imperial both in nature and out of it, and the poets have indeed done splendid justice to this splendid bird, but unfairly, and at the expense of others. Thus, that which is grand in eagles is wicked in hawks. The latter are always “rending” something, or “ ravening,” or “ gorged,” or “ bloudy.” Once and again, by accident as it were, and for no obvious purpose, the “ gentle spar-hawk,” “ the soaring hobby,” and “ the merlin ” are introduced. Spenser, a naturalist, knew the goshawk, and Burns sees it “ driving on the wheeling hare.” But the buzzard is hardly allowed to be worth calling a bird, and is used to express the ne plus ultra of unworthiness among fowls ; the osprey is treated as of “ ill-omen,” and the constant companion of “ obscene ” birds ; while the kite is held in general abomination, it is regarded only as a carrionbird, a scavenger, and as eating human flesh. In the last character, Macaulay delights in “ the carrion-kite.” He gives Valerius to “the kite,” the Lord of Norba to “ the Porcean kites,” “ fairhaired” armies to “ the kites,” and

When used in sport, both hawks and falcons are abundantly referred to, — as “ haggards,” “ gentles,” “ tiercelets,” “ tarsels,” and so forth, —and many fine results obtained, with the adventitious help of hernshaws and cranes, lures, bells, hoods, jesses, and all the other paraphernalia of falconry. We have

is fired with a worthy admiration of “ the lordly fowl ” of Spenser, the Marmion among the feathered. But through all this praise we hear the sad jingling of the trained bird’s bells. In nature, as apart from falconry, this splendid family, the Falconidæ, has no more than the meagre recognition I have already noted. The peregrine, the earl among the birds; the kestrel, so beautiful and so brave ; or the merlin, “ the lady’s hawk,” conspicuous even among falcons for its grace, its daring, and its astonishing velocity, might each of them adorn many a line which other fowls now encumber.

From these two classes alone, the seafowl and the birds of prey, we might consider the charge of injustice substantiated ; but now that all the birds are in court, I may as well call up other witnesses.

Conspicuous, then, in my list as unpopular birds are the following: the bittern, crows, the goose, jackdaw, jay, and magpie, owls, and the raven; to which I should add, from foreign climes, the ostrich, peacock, parrots, and vulture. In their treatment of these birds, the poets’ utterances are curiously characterized not only by a want of sympathy, but also by au unlooked-for want of originality.

The bittern, one of the most strangely poetical of birds, is found useful only as a synonym for discordance and desolation, and if it had not been for its making strange noises would not probably have been mentioned at all. Scott says it “ shrieks,” and “ booms,” and “ drums ” from the “ melancholy marshes ; ” Thomson, so often absurd, says that, “with bill ingulpht, he shakes the surrounding marsh ; ” and Burns may be suspected of harboring the same heresy, for he calls upon the bird to “ rair ” until “ the quagmire reels.” But Churchill and Shenstone do it a more conspicuous injustice; for the one, thinking it to be a sea-bird, and having read of it as a thing of desolate places, symbolizes ruin by making this bird perch on “ the sails of commerce,” while the other calls it the “caitiff bittern.” “ The cawing crow was to the state
A sure interpreter of fate,”

The crows fare even worse. Ever since, in Rome,—

this bird has been one of ill-omen and unkindly superstition. Sometimes it is mistaken for “ the honest rook ; ” at others for the raven, as when Green says,—

and thus, vicariously, arrives at some respect or honor. But as “the crow” it is “ the most accomplished of the feathered race ” in mischief, a “ lurking” (Dyer) and “dastard” (Dryden) bird ; the truth being that this sagacious fowl collects others of its kind to hustle the eagle, which all poets consider an unjustifiable affront to “the bird of Jove,” denying the crow even the right of self-protection. But here, as elsewhere, when a tradition lures them away from nature, the poets all follow each other on Butler’s lines, —

and repeat each other as to its “ trebledated ” years, its “ hoarse ” voice and generally uncanny habits.

“ The crows sit on the murrained cattle,” says Shelley ; and again, “ On the lean sheep sit the prophetic crows; ” and it is in this light, as a carrion-bird and of evil augury, that the bards, without exception, prefer to view it. The goose, sacred to at least two great nations of antiquity, the wisest of fowls, the bird of the quill and “ the gray - goose shafts,” is the butt and jest of poets. They even think it discreditable to the Capitol (see Spenser, Addison, and others) to have been saved by such a bird. It is “ ill-formed ” and “waddling,” “gabbling ” and “greedy,” the symbol of foolishness and garrulity. The poets could not, apparently, look farther than their own patch of common. The farm-yard gate barred their “ eagle vision.” But I forget: the wild-goose was known to one poet, at any rate, for he makes vultures chase it.

Jackdaws are, in poetry, only “ daws,” and, for poetical reasons no doubt, are “ idle,” foolish, “ wrangling,” “ of ominous note,” and “ obscene while that deplorable incident of the feather, which might generously have been forgotten long ago, is carefully made the most of. Yet how is it that contemporary prose writers perpetually refer to the pleasant chattering of the jackdaws, these retainers of old English houses, the privileged tenants of ancient family seats, turret, tower, belfry, and castle wall ? To my own prosaic mind, indeed, the jackdaw is among the birds something like the cedar among trees, as lending an air of ancient repose and long-undisturbed possession to an estate. Its voice strikes on the ear, as we approach some old baronial place or many-spired cathedral, the first note of that reverend calm which possesses us when we actually stand within the hushed precincts of the ivy-muffled walls. So, too, the cooing of doves makes the noon silent, the cry of the corn-crake proclaims the slumber of the summer-evening fields, and the sudden hoot of the owl emphasizes the stillness of the night.

Nor with regard to the magpie do I confess to more contentment with the poets. For here, again, even if we admit it to be “ thieving,” “ chattering,” “ gossiping,” I see no reason for insisting — because it is “the magician magpie” of Churchill, and because country folk believe it “ scatters notes of presage ”— that it is a disagreeable adjunct to the landscape, and nothing better than

It is really a wonder that owls, pelted as they have been with bad names, have not before now become the abandoned and wicked fowls that poets declare them to be. A less sober bird would have gone wrong under such undeserved contumely long ago. It is only necessary to give some of the epithets which the bards have slung at the owl — “ silent,” “ hoarse,” “ moody,” “grim,” “ boding,” “ moping,” “ complaining,” “wailing,” “gibbering,” “screaming,” “shrieking,” “ill-faste,” “obscene,” “ ghastly,” “ dire,” “ unhallowed ” — to be assured of the opinion they had about poor Nyctemene. But this gradually ascending scale of opprobrium is not by any means the whole of her wrongs. Her personal appearance is discredited, for she is described as “ gray ” and “ wide-staring,” with an “ uncomely ” beak, and given to “ blinking ” and “ goggling.” Her association with the night makes night dreadful, for instead of being merely a bird of sleep and innocent darkness, or “ the sad bird of night,” which, when —

the very presence of the owl makes night a time of phantoms and desolation and death and evil deeds. She lives in ruined towers, “lightning-blasted” trees, and “ baneful ” ivy-bushes. Here, during the day, she sleeps, with frequent interruptions (especially in Scott) ; and hence, when darkness favors her criminal designs, she issues forth in the bad company of “ bats ” and “ shadows,” “ sickness,” “ghosts,” and “night-ravens.” She ought to be, but is not, on good terms with the night or the moon, for she “disturbs” and “ afflicts ” the one, making it “ hideous,” while, though she “salutes” the other, she does so with impropriety, either with “unseemly ” or “ derisive shouts,” “ fearful howlings,” or “ barbarous noises,” and, though making a confidante of Selene, does not hesitate to “ mock ” her. This “ bird of the ivy,” therefore, simply as a thing of feathers, a fowl of the air, has much to complain of. But its indignities are multiplied when the poets come to speak of it “ poetically.” Some of their synonyms are these : “ gloom bird,” “ rude bird of hate,” “ shrieking harbinger,” “ foul precursor of the fiend,” “ augur of the fever’s end,” “ messenger of death,” and “companion of infernal hagges ” ! After this, “ deathboding,” “dirge-singing,” “ unholy,” are merely acidulated compliments. But is it not enough to make a good bird take to bad ways to be accused of foretelling “ the hapless doom ” of every impertinent and casual passer-by, when it was really only conversing with its lawful wife; or to speak of it as “ affrighting poets’ souls with words of woe,” when, as a fact, the bird was merely making a remark to a neighbor about her last mouse ?

Nor does the raven fare better. Taunted with its conduct towards Noah, robbed of the credit of nourishing Elijah, triumphed over for its disgrace in Olympus, and abused for flying on the standard of the conquering Dane, “ the hideous raven with prodigious flight” has little to thank English bards for. They credit it with “glossy plumage,” but this is the full extent of their generosity. According to the poets, it is “ solitary,” “ dark and foul,” “ greedy,” “ obscene,” “ a carrion-eater,” “ not less a bird of omen than of prey.” “When on the wing it prefers tempests, and when afoot it sings “ dirges,” perching for choice on “ blasted ” trees, generally “ oaks,” which rhyme with “croaks.” These are the ordinary “ ravens ” of the poets. But Milton and Spenser have “the night - raven,” and Young “the midnight-raven,” which come out in the dark. Nights of horror have always, therefore, raven accompaniments. Ravens fly on funeral wings, and witches use their feathers. Ravens haunt graveyards. Corpses are called “ ravens’ food.” But why go on with the catalogue of the bards’ affronts ?

To these I have added, as unpopular, from foreign birds, the ostrich, peacock, parrot, and vulture. The first Spenser alludes to as “ the greedy ostryge,” Prior as “ the stupid ostrich,” and Cowper as the —

Beyond, therefore, alluding to these popular delusions about this wonderful bird, — its indiscriminate feeding, its burying its head in the sand, and its desertion of its eggs, — the poets can find no use for the ostrich, no opportunity for a compliment. Yet in this one bird centres much of the poetry of the Arabs, and half the romance of the deserts.

Against the peacock there is evidently a grudge, — it may he even a sort of unworthy envy. At any rate, the poets, tedious as courtiers can be in their compliments to “Juno’s bird,” are often very bitter towards it, — when the goddess is out of the way. Their peacock’s legs seem always sticking out of their peacock’s feathers. It is gorgeous, they grant willingly, but it uses its splendor to “affront the daylight,”and “swagger ” over other birds. It is stately. This they readily admit, but its stride easily becomes a “ strut ” and “ perke.” Its voice, never pleasant, is made the worst of, as are its legs and feet. One quotation — it is the very rudest of all their references to this bird — may stand alone in illustration of the strange reluctance of the poets to give the peacock unqualified praise. It is an admirable passage —

The parrot, “ an odious libel on the human voice,” affords, with its other caged kindred, an easy butt for the poets, who industriously repeat after each other the jests about the “ trivial mimic,” that, “ fraught with antics,” “ fine and gay, is kept to strut, look big, and talk alway.” But why call Poll “ a jack-pudding ” ? Had the poets only known that in the East the parrot is the bird of love, that Kama, the Oriental Cupid, always rides on one, what pretty changes would have been rung on the pretty theme ! As it is, Prior no doubt thought it a bold flight of fancy, when singing Mira’s parrot, to say,—

He did not know, apparently, that for some thousands of years the parrot had already been “ the bird of love ” for half the world.

Last on my present list is the vulture. Unlovely, but innocent in nature, it becomes in poetry the incarnation of cruel greed, a thing of crime and blood and horror. I have no wish to beautify the vulture, but, on the other hand, I cannot acquiesce in the poets’ terrible indictment. They make it “ ominous ” and “gloomy,” “hungry” and “ thirsty ” for blood, “ greedy,” “ cruel.” It is the “ death-bird ” of Shelley. Thoughts too vile for utterance are “ vulturethoughts ” (Shakespeare), and folly too malignant for hope is “ vulture-folly ” (Shenstone). A “ vulture-grasp ” (Scott) is that which is wicked and cruel aud lustful ; a “ vulture-eye ” (Mallet, Macaulay), that which gloats over the horrible, or on coming disaster, greedy for its own advantage therefrom. “The rage of the vulture ” (Byron) is a synonym for ferocious and guilty fury; and Shelley gives “victorious wrong” a “ vulture-scream.” It symbolizes in Granville despair, and in Gay carnage.

This is all undeniable poetry, but it is all injustice, because out of sympathy with Nature. And Nature is far more poetical than even the poets.

Philip Robinson.