into his dusky retreat. Silence is as the breath of his nostrils to him,
and the uproar that greets him when he emerges into the open day seems
to alarm and confuse him as it does the pickpocket when everybody cries
Thief.

But the poets, I say, have not despised him:--

"The lark is but a bumpkin fowl;
He sleeps in his nest till morn;
But my blessing upon the jolly owl
That all night blows his horn."

Both Shakespeare and Tennyson have made songs about him. This is
Shakespeare's, from "Love's Labor's Lost," and perhaps has reference to
the white or snowy owl:--

"When icicles hang by the wall,
And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,
And Tom bears logs into the hall,
And milk comes frozen home in pail;
When blood is nipped and ways be foul,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
Tu-whoo!
Tu-whit! tu-whoo! a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

"When all aloud the wind doth blow,
And coughing drowns the parson's saw,
And birds sit brooding in the snow,
And Marian's nose looks red and raw;
When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
Tu-whoo!
Tu-whit! Tu-whoo! a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot."

There is, perhaps, a slight reminiscence of this song in Tennyson's
"Owl:"--

"When cats run home and light is come,
And dew is cold upon the ground,
And the far-off stream is dumb,
And the whirring sail goes round,
And the whirring sail goes round;
Alone and warming his five wits,
The white owl in the belfry sits.

"When merry milkmaids click the latch,
And rarely smells the new-mown hay,
And the cock hath sung beneath the thatch
Twice or thrice his roundelay,
Twice or thrice his roundelay;
Alone and warming his five wits,
The white owl in the belfry sits."

Tennyson has not directly celebrated any of the more famous birds, but
his poems contain frequent allusions to them. The

"Wild bird, whose warble, liquid sweet,
Rings Eden through the budded quicks,
Oh, tell me where the senses mix,
Oh, tell me where the passions meet,"

of "In Memoriam," is doubtless the nightin