Swallow, my sister, O sister swallow,
How can thine heart be full of the spring?
A thousand summers are over and dead. What hast thou found in the spring to follow?
What hast thou found in thine heart to sing?
What wilt thou do when the summer is shed?
I, the nightingale, all spring through,
O swallow, sister, O changing swallow,
All spring through till the spring be done, Clothed with the light of the night on the dew,Sing, while the hours and the wild birds follow, Take flight and follow, and find the sun.
Algernon Charles Swinburne.
Those swallows! No one has described them; no one has sung their praises worthily. That fatal poverty of language! It makes us impotent. What can we say of our feelings towards the ocean, the swallow, or the rose? How can we pluck out the heart of Nature"s mysteries, and cage her wild force and heavenly beauty in mere twigs and wires of words?
The swallow is a wonder and a delight to me. I could watch those ineffably swift, beautiful, and graceful creatures on the wing for hour after hour. They fill me always with a vague yearning, a strangely mingled feeling of loving admiration and unquenchable desire. If I could but fly with them for one sunny hour! If I could but understand their language! Times out of number have I stood and watched them dipping and flashing and gliding and wheeling in the sunshine and sweet air, and wondered and wondered, What do they mean? What are they? Why am I doomed to crawl like a caterpillar on this dull clay ball, and envy these children of the air their joy, and speed, and power of flight?
Think of it-the glory of the sudden turn, the swift rise, the wide, circle in the warm, spicy air, and then the long, long dive, fifty feet down from the crown of the elm to the nodding plumes of the scented clover!
No, we know nothing of the swallow. He baffles us, delights us, tantalizes us with his superiority; and then, when the grey web of the winter begins to weave in the corner of the sky; he shakes his glossy wings and swims away in the golden track of departing summer.
Robert Blatchford.
Author.-Robert Blatchford, born in 1851, English journalist and author, sometime joint editor of The Clarion. His chief books are Merrie England, A Son of the Forge, Britain for the British, Not Guilty, and The Sorcery Shop.
General Notes.-What is there of " wild force" and " heavenly beauty" in a swallow? " Ineffably" is inexpressibly. " Tantalizes" has reference to Tantalus, who, according to Greek myth, was tortured in the Underworld by being placed in the midst of a lake whose waters reached to his chin, but receded whenever he attempted to allay his thirst, while over his head hung branches laden with choice fruits, which likewise receded whenever he stretched out his hands to grasp them. Write an essay on " What I have Noticed about Swallows."