Tennyson's Birds.

King Country Chronicle, Volume X, Issue 909, 23 September 1916, Page 3

Tennyson's Birds.

, + Of all our poets, Tennyson was the most exact .in his rendering of the songs or calls of . birds. A young lady was present when he was reading "Maud." When he came to the passage which says : "-Birds in the high Hall garden cry 'Maud ! Maud ! Maud !' " he suddenly ceased reading and asked her abruptly what the birds were. She blushed and hesitated, and then eaid : "Nightingales, I suppose." The poet turned away, with the one word, "Rooks !" He always made the sound right. What could be better than "The moan of doves," and " 'Whit, whit, whit !' chirruped the nightingale '? Then, linnets, robins, and thrushes "pipe" in his pages, the woodpecker "laughs" and "mocks," the lark and the plover "whistle," the jay "scritches," the parrot "screams," the peacock "squalls," the blackbird "warbles," the ocean fowl "shriek," and the eagle "yelps." He may well ask, in one of the daintiest of his lullabies : "What does little birdie say 7" He knows, and he lets his readers know, too.