The keepers with their dogs in leash; The falconers before, Who proudly on their sturdy wrists And in thy solitary haunts By stream or sedgy mere, The laugh, the shout, the cries of dogs And men, came to thine ear. And starting from thy reverie, And springing from the bent, Into the air, from joyous hearts, Another shout was sent. Up, up, into the azure skies On circling pinions strong, Fair eyes pursued thy mounting course Up, up, into the azure skies Thy strenuous pinions go, While shouts and cries, and wondering eyes, Still reach thee from below; But higher, and higher, like a spirit of fire, Still o'er thee hangs thy foe; Thy cruel foe, still seeking With one down-plunging aim, To strike thy precious life For ever from thy frame! But doomed perhaps, as down he darts Old Heron, all those times are past, Those jocund troops are fled; The king, the queen, the keepers green, In many a minster's solemn gloom, Lie all thy crowned enemies, In midnight vaults of stone! The towers are torn, the gates outworn, O'er all those abbeys, convents, all Those chantries and crosses, Where thou didst glide past in thy pride, Grow tawny ferns and mosses. Where banners waved, the ivy grows ;Baronial times are o'er! The forests now are cornfields green, Green is the lakelet's shore. - Where grew the furze, now runs the fence; And whistled moorland-grasses sere, The bow is gone, the hawk is thrown For ever from the hand; And now we live a bookish race, All in a cultured land. Yet here and there some remnant And there, beside the waters, I find thee watching still, When summer is in prime! In the heath that blooms so fair, From the moorland and the air. The gor-cock on the brae, The coot and moor-hen from the reeds, With pinions rustling loud; And in snow-flakes all around. Such is the joy that wakens, That clamours, and that lives, In all the winged creatures, Where nature still survives; In her regions wild and free; Whene'er I meet thee, Heron, By tarns upon the naked hills; Then hail to thee, old Heron, Flit on from dream to dream; Be yet the watcher on the shore, The spirit of the stream; For still at sight of thee come back The storied times of old; Still wandering over cultured fields, The harper and his song. And it is pleasant thus to dream In this kingdom of the free, Now laws are strong and roads are good, Now knowledge falls like sunshine, And the bloody strife of crowns! Then hail to thee, old Heron! Flit on to lakes and streams; And by their waters dreaming, Still prompt these pleasant dreams! THE ROSE OF MAY. AH there's the lily, marble pale, The rose of May its pride display'd Long have been dead those ladies gay But, lithe and tall, the rose of May Such rose as it hath ever been; Left, like a noble deed, to grace The memory of an ancient race! What exact species of rose this is I do not know; it appears not to be approved of in modern gardens, -at least if it be, it is so much altered by cultivation as to have lost much of its primitive character. I saw it in three different situations in Nottinghamshire. In the small remains of gardens and old labyrinthine shrubbery at Awthorpe Hall,-which, when we were there, had just been taken down,-the resi dence of the good Colonel John Hutchinson and his sweet wife Lucy-in the very gardens which, as she relates in his life, he laid out and took so much pleasure in. It was growing also, with tall shoots and abundance of flowers, in the most forlorn of gardens at an old place called Burton Grange, a house so desolate and deserted as to have gained from a poetical friend of ours the appropriate name of The Dead House. It was a dreary and most lonesome place; the very bricks of which it was built were bleached by long exposure to wind and weather; there seemed no life within or about it. Every trace of furniture and wainscot was gone from its interior, and its principal rooms were the depositories of old ploughs and disused ladders; yet still its roof, floors, and windows were in decent repair. It had once upon a time been a well-conditioned house; had been moated, and its garden-wall had been terminated by stately stone pillars surmounted by well-cut urns, one of which, at the time we were there, lay overgrown with grass in the ground beneath; the other, after a similar fall, had been replaced, but with the wrong end uppermost. To add still more to its lonesomeness, thick, wild woods encompassed it on three sides, whence of an evening, and often too in the course of the day, came the voices of owls and other gloomy wood-creatures. "There's not a flower in the garden," said a woman who, with her husband and child, we found, to our astonishment, inhabiting what had once been the scullery," not a flower but fever-few and the rose of May, and you'll not think it worth getting." She was mistaken; I was delighted to find this sweet and favourite rose in so ruinous a situation. Again, we found it in the gardens of Annesley Hall, that most poetical of old mansions; and the ancient housekeeper, at that time its sole inhabitant, pointed out this flower with a particular emphasis. "And here's the rose of May," said she, drawing out a slender spray from a tangle of jessamine that hung about the stone-work of the terrace; "a main pretty thing, though there's little store set by it now-adays!" THE DOR-HAWK. FERN-OWL, Churn-owl, or Goat-sucker, Thrilling the still evening air! In the dark brown wood beyond us, Nightly from his day-long sleep; Meadow green is not for thee; While the aspen branches shiver, 'Mid the roaring of the river, Comes thy chirring voice to me. Bird, thy form I never looked on, And to see it do not care; Thou hast been, and thou art only As a voice of forests lonely, Heard and dwelling only there. Bringing thoughts of dusk and shadow; Trees huge-branched in ceaseless change; Pallid night-moths, spectre-seeming ; All a silent land of dreaming, Indistinct and large and strange. Be thou thus, and thus I prize thee I can read of thee, and find out Like a pleasant voice of dreams! This singular bird, which is found in every part of the old world, as well in the cold regions of Siberia, as in the hot jungles of India, and the lion-haunted forests of Africa, has, as we have said, a large class of relations also in America: the Whip-poor-Will, the Willy-come-go, the Work-away, and the Whoare-you? being all of the same family. In Africa and among the American Indians these birds are looked upon with reverence or fear; for, by some they are supposed to be haunted by the dead, and by others to be obedient to gloomy or evil spirits. The Dor-Hawk of our own country has been subject to slander, as his name of the goal-sucker shows. This name originated of course in districts where goats were used for milking, and furnished, no doubt, an excuse for the false herd, who stole the milk and blamed the bird. The Dor-Hawk, like the owl, is not seen in the day; and like it also, is an inhabitant of wild and gloomy scenes; heathy tracks abounding in fern; moors, and old woods. It is so regular in the time of beginning its nightly cry, that good old Gilbert White declares, it appeared to him to strike up exactly when the report of the Portsmouth evening gun was heard. He says also, that its voice, which resembles the loud purring of a cat, occasions a singu lar vibration even in solid buildings; for that, as he and some of his neighbours sate in a hermitage on a steep hill-side, where they had been taking tea, a Dor-Hawk alighted on the little cross at the top, and uttered his cry, making the walls of the building sensibly vibrate, to the wonder of all the company. I can give no anecdotes of the bird from my own experience. I know him best by his voice, heard mostly from scenes of a wild and picturesque character, in the gloom and shadow of evening, or in the deep calm of summer moonlight. I heard him first in a black, solemn-looking wood, between Houghton Tower, and Pleasington Priory, in Lancashire. Since then I have become familiar with his voice in the pleasant woods of Winter-down, and Claremont, in Surrey. THE OAK-TREE. Sing for the Oak-Tree, The monarch of the wood; Sing for the Oak-tree, That groweth green and good; That groweth broad and branching That groweth now, and yet shall grow The Oak-Tree was an acorn once, Two leaves it had at first, The little sapling Oak-Tree! Its root was like a thread, Till the kindly earth had nourished it, Then out it freely spread: On this side and on that side It grappled with the ground; And in the ancient, rifted rock Its firmest footing found. The winds came, and the rain fell; The gusty tempests blew; He feeble grew and grey; But the Oak was still a thriving tree, Its bark like plated mail. The monarch of the wood; And of its timbers stout and strong The Oak-Tree of the forest Both east and west shall fly; And the blessings of a thousand lands Upon our ship shall lie! For she shall not be a man-of-war, Nor a pirate shall she be ;- Then sing for the Oak-Tree, The monarch of the wood; Sing for the Oak-Tree, That groweth green and good; That groweth broad and branching Within the forest shade; That groweth now, and yet shall grow, When we are lowly laid! THE CAROLINA PARROT. PARROTS, with all their cleverness, are not capa. ble of keeping up a dialogue; otherwise we might suppose something like the following to be in character with their humour and experience. POLL'S MISTRESS. I've heard of imp, I've heard of sprite; And swallows' nests, so rich and sweet, Of which the Chinese people eat; But of your nests I never heard, What kind are they, I pray thee, bird? PARROT. Nests! ha! ha! ha! what sort of nests should they be? There, now, I am better! but my throat is quite hot; Can't I have a glass of water?-(She coughs.) Bless me, what a cold I've got! Do, shut that window, Jenny, or we shall all die of cold; And mend the fire, can't you, as you already have been told! You may fancy if you please, but you'll never know And let's have a cup of tea, for I'm just tired to from me! I never blab, not I! What sort of nest is built? Ha! ha! ha! with sheets and blankets and a fine death. What a shocking cold it is! and I'm so short of breath!-(She coughs again.) (She speaks in another voice.) Put it down in your little book,- -a four-post bed, I Tea's ready, if you please. Ready is it? say, With the water in the pot? With damask moreen hangings, and made every day! Yes, ma'am! Well, then, I'll go and have my tea, ha! ha! ha! Oh, how it makes me laugh! ha! ha! ha! I shall split my sides with laughing some of these days! ha ha! ha! CAPTAIN. Come, now, you silly prate-a-pace PARROT. while the muffin's hot! Exit POLL. The Parrot of which we have been reading, may be supposed to have been the one of which so interesting an account is given by Wilson in his American Ornithology. It was taken at the Big-bone lick, where he witnessed the extreme affection and strong sympathy which the parrots have for each other, and of which we have imagined our bird to speak. Its merriment, too, respecting the nests of the tribe, may pass as natural, considering the little light Wilson could obtain on the subject, and the vivacious mockery of the bird's disposition, even if it had had the Of the Big-bone lick, did you say?—Ay, we used to power of giving him the requisite information. A Parrot's very fond of salt! I really declare Covering the ground! Ah, Captain! my good fellow, I would laugh if I could, but to me it was no funheigh-ho! No fun at all, Captain, heigh-ho! CAPTAIN. Nay, Poll, cheer up, you 're better here PARROT. Captain, how you talk! we Parrots love each otherThere you shot dozens of us,-my father and my mother, The parrot has been made to speak of her travels with "the Captain" through the morasses and cedarswamps, and of the trouble she gave him, "when many a time," says he, (Wilson) "I was tempted to "And in this manner," he goes on to abandon it." say, "I carried it upwards of a thousand miles in my pocket, where it was exposed all day to the jolting of the horse, but regularly liberated at meal-times and in the evening, at which it always expressed great satisfaction." The Chickasaw and the Chactaw Indians, among whom he was travelling, collected about him whenever he stopped, men, women, and children, laughing greatly at his novel companion. Kelinky was the name the Chickasaws called the parrot; but hearing the name of Poll, they immediately adopted it, and through Poll's medium, he and the Indians always became very sociable. "On arriving," says Wilson, "at Mr. Dunbar's, below Natchez, I procured a cage, and placed it under the piazza, where, by its call, it soon attracted the passing flocks, such is the attachment they have for each other. Numerous parties frequently alighted on the I shall not forget it in a hurry,-what wailing and trees immediately above, keeping up a continual concrying,versation with the prisoner. One of these I woundWhat flying round and round there was! What com- ed slightly in the wing, and the pleasure Poll expressforting the dying! ed on meeting with this new companion, was really You, yourself, laid down your gun,-overcome by the amusing. She crept close up to it, as it hung on the sight, And said you would not shoot again, at least that voice, as if sympathising in its misfortunes; scratched night! Heigh-ho! I am just ready to cry! side of the cage; chattered to it in a loud tone of about its head and neck with her bill; and both, at night, nestled as close as possible to each other, some And I think I shall cry before I have done! (She times Poll's head being thrust among the plumage of the other. On the death of this companion, she ap cries like a child.) |