ing.
I am the cygnet to this pale faint swan,
Who chants a doleful hymn to his own death,
And from the organ-pipe of frailty sings
His soul and body to their lasting rest."

Again, in "Lucrece" (1611), we have these touching lines:

"And now this pale swan in her watery nest,
Begins the sad dirge of her certain ending."

And once more, in "The Phoenix and Turtle:"

"Let the priest in surplice white,
That defunctive music can,
Be the death-divining swan,
Lest the requiem lack his right."

This superstition, says Douce,[329] "was credited by Plato, Chrysippus,
Aristotle, Euripides, Philostratus, Cicero, Seneca, and Martial. Pliny,
AElian, and Athenaeus, among the ancients, and Sir Thomas More, among the
moderns, treat this opinion as a vulgar error. Luther believed in it."
This notion probably originated in the swan being identified with
Orpheus. Sir Thomas Browne[330] says, we read that, "after his death,
Orpheus, the musician, became a swan. Thus was it the bird of Apollo,
the bird of music by the Greeks." Alluding to this piece of folk-lore,
Carl Engel[331] remarks: "Although our common swan does not produce
sounds which might account for this tradition, it is a well-known fact
that the wild swan (_Cygnus ferus_), also called the 'whistling swan,'
when on the wing emits a shrill tone, which, however harsh it may sound
if heard near, produces a pleasant effect when, emanating from a large
flock high in the air, it is heard in a variety of pitches of sound,
increasing or diminishing in loudness according to the movement of the
birds and to the current of the air." Colonel Hawker[332] says, "The
only note which I ever heard the wild swan make, in winter, is his
well-known 'whoop.'"[333]

[329] "Illustrations of Shakespeare," 1839, p. 161.

[330] Works, 1852, vol. i. p. 357.

[331] "Musical Myths and Facts," 1876, vol. i. p. 89.

[332] "Instructions to Young Sportsmen," 11th ed., p. 269.

[333] See Baring-Gould's "Curious Myths of the Middle Ages,"
1877, p. 561; Thorpe's "Northern Mythology," 1852, vol. iii.
pp. 302-328.

_Tassel-Gentle._[334] The male of the goshawk was so called on account
of its tractable disposition, and the facility with which it was tamed.
The word occurs in "Romeo and Juliet" (ii. 2):

"O, for a falconer's voice
To lure this tassel-gentle back again!"

[334] Properly "tiercel gentle," Frenc