And leaves be large and long,
It is full merry in fair forest
To hear the fowles' song.
The wood-wele sang, and wolde not cease,
Sitting upon the spray;
So loud, it wakened Robin Hood
In the greenwood where he lay."

It might almost be said that the birds are all birds of the poets and
of no one else, because it is only the poetical temperament that
fully responds to them. So true is this, that all the great
ornithologists--original namers and biographers of the birds--have been
poets in deed if not in word. Audubon is a notable case in point, who,
if he had not the tongue or the pen of the poet, certainly had the
eye and ear and heart--"the fluid and attaching character"--and the
singleness of purpose, the enthusiasm, the unworldliness, the love, that
characterize the true and divine race of bards.

So had Wilson, though perhaps not in as large a measure; yet he took
fire as only a poet can. While making a journey on foot to Philadelphia,
shortly after landing in this country, he caught sight of the red-headed
woodpecker flitting among the trees,--a bird that shows like a
tricolored scarf among the foliage,--and it so kindled his enthusiasm
that his life was devoted to the pursuit of the birds from that day. It
was a lucky hit. Wilson had already set up as a poet in Scotland, and
was still fermenting when the bird met his eye and suggested to his soul
a new outlet for its enthusiasm.

The very idea of a bird is a symbol and a suggestion to the poet. A
bird seems to be at the top of the scale, so vehement and intense is
his life,--large-brained, large-lunged, hot, ecstatic, his frame charged
with buoyancy and his heart with song. The beautiful vagabonds, endowed
with every grace, masters of all climes, and knowing no bounds,--how
many human aspirations are realized in their free, holiday lives, and
how many suggestions to the poet in their flight and song!

Indeed, is not the bird the original type and teacher of the poet, and
do we not demand of the human lark or thrush that he "shake out his
carols" in the same free and spontaneous manner as his winged
prototype? Kingsley has shown how surely the old minnesingers and early
ballad-writers have learned of the birds, taking their key-note from the
blackbird, or the wood-lark, or the throstle, and giving utterance to a
melody as simple and unstudied. Such things as the following were surely
caught fr