“Now sings the woodland loud and long,
And distance takes a lovelier hue,
And drowned in yonder living blue
The lark becomes a sightless song.”

And again in this from “A Dream of Fair Women:”—­

           “Then I heard

A noise of some one coming through the lawn,
And singing clearer than the crested bird

            That claps his wings at dawn.”

The swallow is a favorite bird with Tennyson, and is frequently mentioned, beside being the principal figure in one of those charming love-songs in “The Princess.”  His allusions to the birds, as to any other natural feature, show him to be a careful observer, as when he speaks of

“The swamp, where hums the dropping snipe.”

His single bird-poem, aside from the song I have quoted, is “The Blackbird,” the Old World prototype of our robin, as if our bird had doffed the aristocratic black for a more democratic suit on reaching these shores.  In curious contrast to the color of its plumage is its beak, which is as yellow as a kernel of Indian corn.  The following are the two middle stanzas of the poem:—­

“Yet, though I spared thee all the spring,
Thy sole delight is, sitting still,
With that gold dagger of thy bill
To fret the summer jenneting.

“A golden bill! the silver tongue
Cold February loved is dry;
Plenty corrupts the melody
That made thee famous once, when young.”

Shakespeare, in one of his songs, alludes to the blackbird as the ouzel-cock; indeed, he puts quite a flock of birds in this song:—­

“The ouzel-cock so black of hue,
With orange tawny bill;
The throstle with his note so true,
The wren with little quill;
The finch, the sparrow, and the lark,
The plain song cuckoo gray,
Whose note full many a man doth mark,
And dares not answer nay.”

So far as external appearances are concerned,—­form, plumage, grace of manner,—­no one ever had a less promising subject than had Trowbridge in the “Pewee.”  This bird, if not the plainest dressed, is the most unshapely in the woods.  It is stiff and abrupt in its manners and sedentary in its habits, sitting around all day, in the dark recesses of the woods, on the dry twigs and branches, uttering now and then its plaintive cry, and “with many a flirt and flutter” snapping up its insect game.

The pewee belongs to quite a large family of birds, all of whom have strong family traits, and who are not the most peaceable and harmonious of the sylvan folk.  They are pugnacious, harsh-voiced, angular in form and movement, with flexible tails and broad, flat, bristling beaks that stand to the face at the angle of a turn-up nose, and most of them wear a black cap pulled well down over their eyes.  Their heads are large, neck and legs short, and elbows sharp.  The wild Irishman of them all is the great crested flycatcher, a large, leather-colored or sandy-complexioned