So when the lark, poor bird! afar espyeth
Her yet unfeathered children, whom to save
She strives in vain—slain by the fatal scythe,
Which from the meadow her green locks do shave,
That their warm nest is now become their grave.
The woful mother up to heaven springs,
And all about her plaintive notes she flings,
And their untimely fate most pitifully sings.
GILES FLETCHER, 1588–1623.
[Illustration: [Pastoral Scene]]
VI.
=May.=
What, alas! will become of those luckless wights—the future poets of
Caffreland and New Zealand, of Patagonia and Pitcairn’s Island—when they
suddenly awake to the miserable reality that there is no May in their
year. May! The very word in itself is charming; pleasing to the eye,
falling sweetly on the ear, gliding naturally into music and song,
dowered with innumerable images of beauty and delight, imaginary bliss,
and natural joy. What, we ask again, will be the melancholy consequences
to the southern hemisphere when they become fully conscious that they
have lost the “merry month,” the “soote season,” from their
calendar—that with them January must forever linger in the lap of May.
Conceive of Hottentot elegies and Fejee sonnets enlarging upon the balmy
airs and soft skies of November; raving about the tender young blossoms
of December, and the delicate fruits of January. Will the world ever
become really
accustomed to such a change of key? We doubt it. After all, there is
something in primogeniture; it naturally gives all the honors of
precedence. Those writers who first caught the ear of the listening
earth will always have the best of it; their successors must fain be
content to yield a certain homage to long-established privileges. It
will be a great while yet—at least a thousand years or so—before the
Dryden of Port Sidney or the Camoens of Paraguay shall venture to say
hard things of May!