Even the Greek minor poets, the swarm of them that are represented in the Greek Anthology, rarely make affectionate mention of the birds, except perhaps Sappho, whom Ben Jonson makes speak of the nightingale as—­

       “The dear glad angel of the spring.”

The cicada, the locust, and the grasshopper are often referred to, but rarely by name any of the common birds.  That Greek grasshopper must have been a wonderful creature.  He was a sacred object in Greece, and is spoken of by the poets as a charming songster.  What we would say of birds the Greek said of this favorite insect.  When Socrates and Phaedrus came to the fountain shaded by the plane-tree, where they had their famous discourse, Socrates said:  “Observe the freshness of the spot, how charming and very delightful it is, and how summer-like and shrill it sounds from the choir of grasshoppers.”  One of the poets in the Anthology finds a grasshopper struggling in a spider’s web, which he releases with the words:—­

       “Go safe and free with your sweet voice of song.”

Another one makes the insect say to a rustic who had captured him:—­

       “Me, the Nymphs’ wayside minstrel whose sweet note
        O’er sultry hill is heard, and shady grove to float.”

Still another sings how a grasshopper took the place of a broken string on his lyre, and “filled the cadence due.”

       “For while six chords beneath my fingers cried,
        He with his tuneful voice the seventh supplied;
        The midday songster of the mountain set
        His pastoral ditty to my canzonet;
        And when he sang, his modulated throat
        Accorded with the lifeless string I smote.”

While we are trying to introduce the lark in this country, why not try this Pindaric grasshopper also?

It is to the literary poets and to the minstrels of a softer age that we must look for special mention of the song-birds and for poetical rhapsodies upon them.  The nightingale is the most general favorite, and nearly all the more noted English poets have sung her praises.  To the melancholy poet she is melancholy, and to the cheerful she is cheerful.  Shakespeare in one of his sonnets speaks of her song as mournful, while Martial calls her the “most garrulous” of birds.  Milton sang:—­

       “Sweet bird, that shunn’st the noise of folly,
        Most musical, most melancholy,
        Thee, chantress, oft the woods among
        I woo, to hear thy evening song.”

To Wordsworth she told another story:—­

       “O nightingale! thou surely art
        A creature of ebullient heart;
        These notes of thine,—­they pierce and pierce,—­
        Tumultuous harmony and fierce! 
        Thou sing’st as if the god of wine
        Had helped thee to a valentine;
        A song in mockery and despite
        Of shades, and dews, and silent night,
        And steady bliss, and all the loves
        Now sleeping in these peaceful groves.”