Page:Poems of Anne Countess of Winchilsea 1903.djvu/132

 cxxviii INTRODUCTION ���has for three hundred years belonged to "lineal Heirs" of the owl tribe, and one of the pleasing night-sounds that fehe records is the clear "hollowing" of the owl from a tree 'famed for her delight." All of this bears the mark of first-hand and interested observation, as do likewise the two descriptions which the young rat and his dam give of the cock, in the fable The young Bat and his Dam, the Cock and the Cat. In Jealousy the Rage of a Man there is a delightfully fresh and vivid description of the courtship of two doves. The male bird puts on his most enticing airs while the female carelessly shifts her ground and indifferently pecks away at the scattered grain, but on the appearance of a rival her seeming coldness disappears, her feathers become sleek as she prepares for a fight, and in a rage she attacks the parti-colored neck of the new favorite. The dove had been long poetically relied upon as an image of cooing, con- jugal content, hence this picture of a jealous, fighting dove is as original as it is effective. The observation in the little poem is strikingly exact. Wordsworth himself could not find fault with it. �The nightingale is immemorially the poet's bird. English verse has never failed to give enthusiastic, if somewhat monotonous, recognition of Philomela's claims. From Chau- cer, Spenser, Sidney, Lyly, Shakespeare, Carew, Crashaw, Milton, Marvell, even Dryden, Lady Winchilsea might have compiled an anthology of nightingale poetry. From these poets the characteristics of the traditional nightingale are easily deducible, and it is interesting to discover in how far Lady Winchilsea's poem The Nightingale is in accord with the work of her predecessors. She is almost the only poet in the list to give no note of the time of the song, but she is at one with Lyly and Milton in mentioning spring as its season. Her nightingale apparently sang in May. The sweetness of the song is, of course, generally observed, but ��� �