"The sun is bright--the air is clear,
The darting swallows soar and sing,
And from the stately elms I hear
The blue-bird prophesying spring."
I can positively say that the kingfisher is the bird to which the poet
refers. Another parallel passage may be quoted:
"The fields made golden with the flower of March,
The throstle singing in the feather'd larch,
And down the river, like a flame of blue,
Keen as an arrow flies the water-king."
"The little halcyon's azure plume
Was never half so blue."--Shenstone.
[65] Campbell says, "Coming events cast their shadows before." The sun, by
refraction, still appears in full size above the horizon, after it has
really sunk below it; and reappears in full, when only just the upper edge
has reached the horizon.
"As the sun,
Ere it is risen, sometimes paints its image
In the atmosphere, so often do the spirits
Of great events stride on before the events,
And in to-day already walks to-morrow."
_Death of Wallenstein_, Act v. Scene i.
[66] The wish realized. See Poem xcv. s. 9.
[67] Somersby may be described as being utterly secluded from the "madding
crowd"--the most rural retirement that the most agricultural country can
show. I find the population was recorded in 1835, when the family still
resided there, as being sixty-one, whilst the church accommodation was for
sixty. Small, however, as both church and parish were, and still are, the
so-called Rectory is a roomy family house, with its back to the road, on
which there can be but little traffic, and it fronts a very extensive
stretch of country, on which you enter by a steep slope of ground. There
are no striking features in this expanse of soft undulations, but you feel
a consciousness that the sea is not far off, and that the scenery is well
adapted for fine cloud and sunset effects. The air seems to have a bracing
tone, and the several equally small churches around, tell of thin
populations, and a general condition of rustic simplicity and peace.
[68]
"They told me, Heraclitus, they told me you were dead:
They brought me bitter news to hear, and bitter tears to shed;
I wept, as I remember'd how often you and I
Had tired the sun with talking, and sent him down the sky.
"And now that thou are lying, my dear old Carian guest,
A handful of grey ashes, long long ago at rest,
Still are thy pleasant voices, thy nightingales, awake,
For death he taketh all away, but them he cannot take."
I cannot resist quoting these touching lines, which are translated from
the Greek of Callimachus, librarian of Alexandria, 260 B.C., on his friend
Heraclitus of Halicarnassus.
[69] See P. cix., s. 3.
[70]
"Jocund day
Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain-tops."
_Romeo and Juliet_, Act iii., s. 5.
[71] _Ignis fatuus_--"Will o' the Wisp."
[72] That is, the _ursa minor_, or little bear, which is a small
constellation that contains the pole star, and never sets in our latitude.
[73] This is a favourite figure. In Poem xlix., stanza 1, we read,
"Like light in many a shiver'd lance
That breaks about the dappled pools."
[74]
"This holly by the cottage-eave,
To-night, ungather'd, shall it stand."