WOOD NOTES WILD.

Otago Witness, Issue 3828, 26 July 1927, Page 74

WOOD NOTES WILD.

Readers of Coleridge’s most famous poem must recall the passage in which he describes how the Ancient Mariner in the last stages of his delirium hears a series of pleasant sounds stealing across the sea (says a writer in John o’ London’s Weekly). Sometimes a-dropping from the sky I heard the skylark sing; Sometimes all little birds that are. How they seemed to fill the sea and air With their sweet jargoning I This chorus of the birds has also been recalled in a poem—scarcely less familiar—by Wordsworth:— I heard a thousand blended notes, Whilst in a grove I sate reclined, In .that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts Bring sad thoughts to the mind. * * « The “ thousand blended notes ” make up between them one vast orchestra, in which each note has its own separate and distinct quality. There is, for instance, the note of the cuckoo. Here’s the spring back or close. When the almond blossom blows: We shall have the word In a minor third There is none but the cuckoo knows, wrote Browning, whose poems teem with musical references. Another instance of Browning's accurate ear for bird-notes is supplied in “ Home Thoughts from Abroad”: — That’s the wise thrush ; he sings each song twice over. Lest you should think he nover could recapture The first fine careless rapture ! Tennyson was a keen observer of birdlife, and was quick to note the differences in the notes of various birds. The distinction between the linnet and the song-thrush is skilfully indicated in the couplet: — Sometimes the linnet piped his song : Sometimes the throstle whistled strong. Elsewhere he attempts to convey in onomatopoeic verse the song of the thrush: *' Summer is coming, summer is coming. I know it, I know it, I know it. Light again, leaf again, life again, love again,” Yes, my wild little Poet. Aiid how admirably is the harsh, discord.* it song of the rook indicated in * Maud — Birds In the high Hall garden. When twilight was falling, Maud, Maud, Maud, Maud. They,were crying and calling! * * * Shakespeare, in “ Love’s Labour’s Lost,” refers to the curious note of the owl’s song:— Then nightly sings the staring owl, Tu-whit, Tu-whu, a merry note. Charles 11. Doughty applies a relentless realism to the early morning song of birds in his epic, “ The Clouds”:— ° Therewith wakes shrill consent of small fowls’ song. In field and grove: (Zit-zit-gl-gi-gl, pp-tche; Tch-tch, chu-wi).

One infers that the poet disliked being awakened from his slumbers. Mr Edward Shanks alludes to the “ pleasant note ” of the nightjar in one of his poems, and the nightjar forms the subject of a poem by Mr J. Murray Allison, who has devoted many years to observing and recording the habits of birds:— If you’re very, very lucky. On a summer's night in June You may hear the Nightjar singing His simple little tunc. It’s a cheer-ee, cheer-ee, cheer-ee, As he perches on a tree: So close he lies along the branch He’s difficult to see. * * « The melancholy note of the nightingale is well expressed in Sir Philip Sidney’s poem, “O Philomela Fair”:— The nightingale as soon as April bringeth Unto her rested sense a perfect waking. While late base earth, proud of new clothing, springeth, Sings out her woes, a thorn her song book making And mournfully bewailing. Her throat in tunes expresseth What grief her breast oppresseth. John Lyly, in “The Songs of Birds,” is somewhat more explicit:— What bird so sings, yet does so wail? O, ’tis the ravish'd nightingale— Jug, jug, jug, jug—tereu—she cries. And still her woes at midnight rise. Henley in one of his poems confesses to a preference for a song of the blackbird over all his compeers—but for a purely sentimental reason:— The nightingale has a lyre o( gold. The lark’s is a clarion call, And the blackbird plays but a boxwood flute, But I love him best of all.

For his song is all the joy ot life: And we in the mad spring weather, We two have listened till he sang Our hearts and lips together. Another admirer of the blackbird was Tennyson, who thus apostrophises it:— 0 Blackbird ! sing me something well: While all the neighbours shoot thee round, I keep smooth plats of fruitful ground. Where thou may’st warble, eat and dwell

Finally, the sweet song of the lark is beautifully suggested in one of William -.Hingham’s poems:—

"Air, air! blue air and white! Whither I flee, whither, O whither, 0 whither I flee ! ” (Thus the lark hurried, mounting from the lea) ’ “ Hills, countries, many waters glittering bright, Whither I see, whither I sec! deeper, deeper, deeper, Whither I see, see, see 1 ’’ “ Gay lark,” I cried, " The song that’s bred In happy nest may well to heaven make flight.”

But no doubt it is the aspiring flight, rather than the song, of the lark that has persuaded so many poets to sing its praises.