Fleet, fleet, fleet,
Are those the swallows I hear?
The sound was sudden and sweet,
And this is the spring of the year.
To my dim eyes they seem
But a sudden light as they pass;
But I know how they skim o’er the stream,
And over the churchyard grass.
Their wings are a sudden light,
Thy tunes will not be long,
For my spirit is nearer its flight
Than that of the young and the strong;
Fleet, fleet, fleet, my days are waning fast,
I hear them cry, for out of the sky,
“There are wings for the soul at last.”
SWALLOWS.
A NEW season is begun. Parliament met to-day. London is getting full,
and the price of coals has fallen. The celandine (swallow-flower) is
beginning to cover the hedgerow banks of the Isle of Wight with yellow
stars, and the swallows themselves will soon be with us again.
I may mention as another agreeable sign of spring the return of “Pen and
Pencil,” not to the old nest, but under shelter of the old hospitality.
The Rhodians used to salute the return of the swallows with a traditional
popular song, the _Chelidonisma_; perhaps some lady present may gratify
us with a chant of the like purport. My own aim this evening is merely
to give some brief natural history notes on the British swallows, drawn
partly from books and partly from my own observation.
There are about sixty species of the family of Hirundinidæ, but only four
kinds (counting the swift as one) are habitual visitors of the British
Islands—the chimney swallow, the house martin, the bank martin (_Hirundo
rustica_, _urbica_, and _riparia_), and fourthly the swift (_Cypselus_).
The chimney swallow (_rustica_) has a brownish-red throat, back of
blue-black lustre, under part of body reddish-white, and a long forked
tail. It is a bold bird, and trusting to its superior speed, dashes at a
hawk whenever it sees one. It always builds near men, and makes its
cup-shaped nest inside chimneys and old wells, in barns, gateways, sheds,
and arches of bridges. There are four or five spotted eggs, and it
brings out two broods each year. The chimney swallow has a sweet little
song of its own, and is one of the earliest birds heard of a summer
morning, beginning soon after two o’clock. It is said to grow very tame
in confinement, but I never saw and should not like to see one in a cage.
These are the most abundant of our swallows, and the same birds return
year after year, while their little time endures, to the same localities,
and often very likely to the same nests.
The house martin (_urbica_), or window swallow or martlet, is smaller and
less agile than its cousin just described, and has a far shorter tail.
Its feet and toes are downy. It comes later than the chimney swallow,
builds amidst towns, on the _outside_ of houses, under eaves and in
window niches, and chooses a northern aspect to avoid the direct rays of
the sun, which would crack its mud nest. Martlets sometimes build on the
face of cliffs, as may be seen at the Giant’s Causeway. It has four or
five _white_ eggs, and brings out two broods. As a vocalist it can only
get as far as a chirp, or at most a small twitter. Its body is white
below, and purple on the back and wings. The house martin does not, like
the chimney swallow, sweep the ground and water in its flight.
The bank swallow (_riparian_) or sand martin, which is so sociable with
its own kind but not with man, digs horizontal and serpentine holes in
banks, sloping upwards to avoid rain, where it lays in a careless nest
four or six white eggs. It has sometimes, but perhaps not always, two
broods. These are the smallest and wildest of our swallows; nearly mute,
or with only a tiny chirp; and, when they can, frequent large spaces of
water. They often fly waveringly with a quick fluttering of wings,
somewhat like butterflies, and anon sail circling like other swallows.
They use their old caves for some years, but may often be seen digging
new ones. They are probably driven out sometimes by the fleas which, as
I have often seen, abound in their habitations. Birds, indeed, free and
airy as their life seems, suffer much from vermin, and the poor baby
swallows are terribly preyed upon. The sand martin is mouse-coloured on
the back and brownish-white below. It is the earliest to arrive in
England, and may be expected now in three weeks or so. Next we may look
for the chimney swallow with his long tail—then for the house martin, and
latest of all comes the swift (_Cypselus_), which some naturalists say is
no true swallow, having several anatomical peculiarities, the most
noticeable being that all four toes go forward. No other bird, I think
(save the Gibraltar swift), has a similar foot. The swift can cling well
to the face of a wall, but cannot perch in the usual bird fashion, and
gets on very badly on the ground, finding it difficult to rise on the
wing. Once in the air, with its long wings in motion, it is truly master
of the situation. It is one of the speediest, if not the speediest, and
can keep on the wing for sixteen hours, which is longer than any other
bird. The swifts are most active in sultry thundery weather. They fly
in rain, but dislike wind. They are the latest day-birds in summer, and
their one very shrill note may be heard up to nearly nine o’clock.
Sometimes they get excited and dart about screaming, perhaps quarrelling,
but usually the swallows, all of them, agree well among themselves,
though they also keep a proper distance. The swifts build high in holes
of walls and rocks. The Tower of London is one of their London palaces.
The nest is bulky and has two white eggs. There is but one brood in the
season, and the swift leaves town for Africa in August, going earliest,
although he was the latest to come.
Swallows for several weeks after their arrival in England play about
before beginning their nests—
“Like children coursing every room
Of some new house.”
They wait for fit weather to go away, and may then be seen sitting in
rows as though meditating on their journey, perhaps dimly sorry to part—
“With a birdish trouble, half-perplexed.”
Utterly mysterious and inscrutable to us are the feelings of our lower
fellow-creatures on this earth, and how the bird of passage,
“lone-wandering but not lost,” finds its distant goal, is beyond man’s
wit to explain.
After this I fear tedious sketch of our four winged friends, I will only
add another word or two as to the name swallow, a rather odd word,
entirely different from the Greek _χελῖδών_, and the Latin _hirundo_
(which, unlike as it may appear, philologists tell us is formed from the
Greek name). The Italians call the bird _rondine_ (evidently from the
Latin), and the French _hirondelle_. We get our word from the
Anglo-Saxon, _swalewe_, and the modern German is _schwalbe_. What does
this mean? I must own with regret that it seems to me most likely that
the name is given on account of the voracity of this bird, which is
engaged in swallowing gnats, beetles, bees, may-flies, dragon-flies, and
all kinds of flies from break of day till sunset. The Anglo-Saxon verb
to swallow is _swelgan_. Fain would I take the word _swelgel_, air, sky;
but the Spanish name for our bird seems conclusive for the baser
derivation. The Spaniards call it golondrina (evidently from _gola_,
throat); and it may be added, make a cruel kind of amusement out of the
gulosity of the swallows, by angling for them with fishing-flies from the
walls of the Alhambra, round which the birds dart in myriads on a
summer’s day—descendants of those that played round the heads of the
Moorish kings, who perhaps were kinder to their visitors.
THE RETURN OF THE SWALLOWS.
“OUT in the meadows the young grass springs,
Shivering with sap,” said the larks, “and we
Shoot into air with our strong young wings,
Spirally up over level and lea;
Come, O Swallows, and fly with us
Now that horizons are luminous!
Evening and morning the world of light,
Spreading and kindling, is infinite!”
Far away, by the sea in the south,
The hills of olive and slopes of fern
Whiten and glow in the sun’s long drouth,
Under the heavens that beam and burn;
And all the swallows were gathered there
Flitting about in the fragrant air,
And heard no sound from the larks, but flew
Flashing under the blinding blue.
Out of the depth of their soft rich throats
Languidly fluted the thrushes, and said:
“Musical thought in the mild air floats,
Spring is coming, and winter is dead!
Come, O Swallows, and stir the air,
For the buds are all bursting unaware,
And the drooping eaves and the elm-trees long
To hear the sound of your low sweet song.”
Over the roofs of the white Algiers,
Flashingly shadowing the bright bazaar,
Flitted the swallows, and not one hears
The call of the thrushes from far, from far;
Sighed the thrushes; then, all at once,
Broke out singing the old sweet tones,
Singing the bridal of sap and shoot,
The tree’s slow life between root and fruit.
But just when the dingles of April flowers
Shine with the earliest daffodils,
When, before sunrise, the cold, clear hours
Gleam with a promise that noon fulfils,—
Deep in the leafage the cuckoo cried,
Perched on a spray by a rivulet-side,
“Swallows, O Swallows, come back again
To swoop and herald the April rain!”
And something awoke in the slumbering heart
Of the alien birds in their African air,
And they paused, and alighted, and twittered apart,
And met in the broad white dreamy square,
And the sad slave woman, who lifted up
From the fountain her broad-lipped earthen cup,
Said to herself with a weary sigh,
“To-morrow the swallows will northward fly!”
AULD LANG SYNE;
OR, THE LAW IN 1874.
IN 1868 it was determined by Lord Cairns, then Lord Chancellor, that a
revised edition of the statutes of the realm should be published
containing only such statutes as were actually in force.
In looking over the first volume, which contains statutes passed between
1235 and 1685, one is struck by the number of stringent Acts of
Parliament forming part of our present law, which nevertheless are
habitually neglected.
Now that the destroying hands of the Gladstonian iconoclasts are stayed
there can be no more useful task than to look around us and see how many
of these relics of the embodied wisdom of our ancestors still remain to
us, rusted indeed but ready for our use.
In enumerating a few of these enactments I have two objects in view.
First, I would remind those whose province it is to administer law and
justice to the subjects of Queen Victoria of powers with which they are
armed; and, secondly, I would offer timely warning to those against whom
these powers, when again exercised, which the present healthy state of
public feeling assures us they will be, must inevitably be directed.
To begin then. Can there be a more appalling spectacle than the
“Monstrous Regiment of Women?” Well, we have our weapons of defence
ready in 3 Henry VIII. c. 11., 34 and 35 Henry VIII. c. 8, and 5
Elizabeth c. 4. s. 17. What a sound and vigorous ring is there in the
first of these statutes with the pains and penalties it enacts against
ignorant persons practising physic or surgery, “such,” it goes on to say,
“as common artificers, smythes, wevers and women.” And how discreetly
liberal is the second of these statutes, which indicates a legitimate
field for women’s activity, and allows them, in common with all other
unqualified persons, to cure outward sores, such as “a pyn and the web in
the eye, uncoomes of hands, scaldings, burnings, sore mouths, saucelin,
morfew” and the like, by herbs, ointments, baths, poultices, and
plasters. But most practical, perhaps, of all these three statutes is
the statute of Elizabeth, which, making no exception, sweeps within its
enactments all women under the age of forty who have failed to fulfil the
great end of their being, matrimony.
“And bee it further enacted that twoo justices of the peace the maior
or other head officer of any citie burghe or towne corporate and twoo
aldermen, or twoo other discrete burgesses of the same citie burghe
or towne corporate yf ther be no aldermen, shall and may by vertue
hereof appoint any suche woman as is of thage of twelfe yeres and
under thage of fourtye yeres and unmarried and foorthe of service, as
they shall thinck meete to serve, to be reteyned or serve by the yere
or by the weeke or daye, for such wages and in such reasonable sorte
and maner as they shall thinck meete: And yf any such woman shall
refuse so to serve, then yt shalbe lawfull for the said justices of
peace maior or head officers to comit suche woman to warde untill she
shalbe bounden to serve as aforesaid.”
The effect of enforcing this law would be salutary indeed. Under the
existing state of things men are frequently employed upon duties so
disagreeable and ill-paid that Providence can only have intended them for
women. Why then do we not take advantage of the power, nay, the duty of
sending women to their proper sphere and mission which is entrusted to
our magistrates and discreet burgesses? As the wages will be fixed by
these authorities, the burden to the rate-payers need not be great. And
we should thus silence the demand which, I am told, women are beginning
to make not only for work (as if their male relations were not always
ready and willing to find them plenty), but even for remunerative work.
But I pass from our women to our agricultural labourers. We have lately
heard much debate on the conduct of commanding officers who, when
labourers at harvest-time were holding out for wages, allowed their
soldiers to help in getting in the harvest. But such aid would never
have been required had not the fifteenth section of the same statute of
Elizabeth been unaccountably overlooked.
“Provided always that in the time of hey or corne harvest, the
justices of peace and every of them, and also the cunstable or other
head officer of every towneshipe, upon request and for thavoyding of
the los of any corne grayne or heye, shall and may cause all suche
artificers and persons as be meete to labour, by the discretions of
the said justices or cunstables or other head officers or by any of
them, to serve by the daye for the mowing reaping shearing getting or
inning of corne grayne and heye, according to the skill and qualite
of the person; and that none of the said persons shall refuse so to
doo, upon payne to suffer imprisonement in the stockes by the space
of twoo dayes and one night.”
Nor need our farmers at any other times in the year fear a deficiency of
labour if they will but invoke the aid of the fifth section of the same
statute, whereby every person between the ages of twelve and sixty not
being employed in any of a few callings mentioned in the Act, nor being a
gentleman born, nor being a student or scholar in any of the universities
or in any school, nor having real estate worth forty shillings a year or
goods and chattels worth £10, nor being the heir-apparent of any one with
real estate worth £10 a year or goods and chattels worth £40, is declared
compellable to be retained to serve in husbandry by the year with any
person that keepeth husbandry.
Again we have Acts of 1275 and 1378 (3 Edward I., and 2 Richard II.), as
our defences against those who are described as “devisors of false news
and of horrible and false lies of prelates dukes earls barons” and,
comprehensively, “other nobles and great men of the realm,” and also of
various officials enumerated, with a like comprehensive “and of other
great officers of the realm.” The Act of Richard II. reiterates and
confirms that of Edward I., and under these Acts “all persons so hardy as
to devise speak or tell any false news, lies, or such other false things”
about great people, incur the penalty of imprisonment “until they have
brought him into Court who was the first author of the tale.” What a
check would the carrying out of these provisions put upon the
impertinences of Own Correspondents, social reformers, gossips,
novelists, caricaturists, and moralists! It will be a happy day for
England when the many thoughtless or malignant persons who now permit
themselves to retail stories inconvenient to members of the aristocracy
or to the dignitaries of the country, suffer the punishment of their
infraction of the law. To take but one instance of the great need there
exists for the protection of our upper classes—an instance, as it
chances, which enables me to show that I would not wish the private
character of even a political enemy to be traduced—I may remind you that
if the statutes of _Scandalum Magnatum_ were enforced there would not now
be at large persons ascribing to the late Prime Minister himself the
authorship of the Greenwich stanza on the Straits of Malacca.
There are many other statutes on which I might enlarge. I might remind
coroners of duties which they have forgotten, and the clergy of rights
which they are allowing to lapse, but time will not permit me.
It is true that when I read my Statute Book I meet with some provisions
of which I do not comprehend the necessity. As a Protestant I do not see
why I should be imprisoned for three years and fined besides, if I carry
off a nun from a convent with her consent; and as a botanist I do not see
why, since January, 1660, I have been prohibited from setting or planting
so much as a single tobacco plant in my garden. Still, all are parts of
one stupendous whole, parts of the sacred fabric built by our forefathers
in “Auld Lang Syne.” Touch one stone and the British Constitution may
crumble. And as a humble member of the Great Constitutional Party I
desire to raise my protest against the canker of decay being left to eat
insidiously into our ancient and revered legislative code, by our
suffering any Acts of Parliament which appear on our Statute Book as
parts of the living Law of the Land to drop into disuse, as if, contrary
to the doctrine of the highest legal authorities, an Act of Parliament
unrepealed _could_ become obsolete.
AULD LANG SYNE,
WHERE HOME WAS.
’TWAS yesterday; ’twas long ago:
And for this flaunting grimy street,
And for this crowding to and fro,
And thud and roar of wheels and feet,
Were elm-trees and the linnet’s trill,
The little gurgles of the rill,
And breath of meadow flowers that blow
Ere roses make the summer sweet.
’Twas long ago; ’twas yesterday.
Our peach would just be new with leaves,
The swallow pair that used to lay
Their glimmering eggs beneath our eaves
Would flutter busy with their brood,
And, haply, in our hazel-wood,
Small village urchins hide at play,
And girls sit binding bluebell sheaves.
Was the house here, or there, or there?
No landmark tells. All changed; all lost;
As when the waves that fret and tear
The fore-shores of some level coast
Roll smoothly where the sea-pinks grew.
All changed, and all grown old anew;
And I pass over, unaware,
The memories I am seeking most.
But where these huddled house-rows spread,
And where this thickened air hangs murk
And the dim sun peers round and red
On stir and haste and cares and work,
For me were baby’s daisy-chains,
For me the meetings in the lanes,
The shy good-morrows softly said
That paid my morning’s lying lurk.
Oh lingering days of long ago,
Not until now you passed away.
Years wane between and we unknow;
Our youth is always yesterday.
But, like a traveller home who craves
For friends and finds forgotten graves,
I seek you where you dwelled, and, lo,
Even farewells not left to say!
RIVER.
AN AUTUMN IDYL.
“Sweet Thames! ran softly, till I end my song.”
SPENSER, _Prothalamion_.
LAURENCE. FRANK. JACK.
LAURENCE.
HERE, where the beech-nuts drop among the grasses,
Push the boat in, and throw the rope ashore.
Jack, hand me out the claret and the glasses;—
Here let us sit. We landed here before.
FRANK.
Jack’s undecided. Say, _formose puer_,
Bent in a dream above the “water wan;”
Shall we row higher, for the reeds are fewer,
There by the pollards, where you see the swan?
JACK.
Hist! That’s a pike. Look,—note against the river,
Gaunt as a wolf,—the sly old privateer,
Enter a gudgeon. Snap,—a gulp, a shiver;—
Exit the gudgeon. Let us anchor here.
FRANK. (_In the grass_.)
Jove, what a day! Black Care upon the crupper
Nods at his post, and slumbers in the sun,
Half of Theocritus, with a touch of Tupper
Churns in my head. The frenzy has begun.
LAURENCE.
Sing to us then. Damoetas in a choker
Much out of tune, will edify the rooks.
FRANK.
Sing you again. So musical a croaker
Surely will draw the fish upon the hooks.
JACK.
Sing while you may. The beard of manhood still is
Faint on your cheeks, but I, alas! am old.
Doubtless you yet believe in Amaryllis;—
Sing me of Her, whose name may not be told.
FRANK.
Listen, O Thames. His budding beard is riper
Say, by a week. Well, Laurence, shall we sing?
LAURENCE.
Yes, if you will. But, ere I play the piper,
Let him declare the prize he has to bring.
JACK.
Hear then, my Shepherds. Lo to him accounted
First in the song—a Pipe I will impart;
This, my Belovèd, marvellously mounted,
Amber and foam—a miracle of art.
LAURENCE.
Lordly the gift. O Muse of many numbers,
Grant me a soft alliterative song.
FRANK.
Me, too, O Muse. And when the umpire slumbers,
Sting him with gnats a summer evening long.
LAURENCE.
Not in a cot, begarlanded of spiders,
Not where the brook traditionally purls,
No; in the Row, supreme among the riders,
Seek I the gem, the paragon of girls.
FRANK.
Not in the waste of column and of coping,
Not in the sham and stucco of a square;
No; on a June-lawn to the water sloping
Stands she I honour, beautifully fair.
LAURENCE.
Dark-haired is mine, with splendid tresses plaited
Back from the brows, imperially curled;
Calm as a grand, far-looking Caryatid
Holding the roof that covers in a world.
FRANK.
Dark-haired is mine, with breezy ripples swinging
Loose as a vine-branch blowing in the morn;
Eyes like the morning, mouth for ever singing,—
Blythe as a bird, new risen from the corn.
LAURENCE.
Best is the song with music interwoven;
Mine’s a musician, musical at heart,
Throbs to the gathered grieving of Beethoven—
Sways to the right coquetting of Mozart.
FRANK.
Best? You should hear mine trilling out a ballad,
Queen at a picnic, leader of the glees;
Not too divine to toss you up a salad,
Great in “Sir Roger” danced among the trees.
LAURENCE.
Ah, when the thick night flares with dropping torches,
Ah, when the crush-room empties of the swarm,
Pleasant the hand that, in the gusty porches,
Light as a snowflake, settles on your arm.
FRANK.
Better the twilight and the cheery chatting,—
Better the dim, forgotten garden-seat,
Where one may lie, and watch the fingers tatting,
Lounging with Bran or Bevis at her feet.
LAURENCE.
All worship mine. Her purity doth hedge her
Round with so delicate divinity, that men
Stained to the soul with money-bag and ledger
Bend to the Goddess, manifest again.
FRANK.
None worship mine. But some, I fancy, love her,
Cynics to boot, I know the children run
Seeing her come, for naught that I discover
Save that she brings the summer and the sun.
LAURENCE.
Mine is a Lady, beautiful and queenly,
Crown’d with a sweet, continual control,
Grandly forbearing, lifting life serenely
E’en to her own nobility of soul.
FRANK.
Mine is a Woman, kindly beyond measure,
Fearless in praising; faltering in blame,
Simply devoted to other people’s pleasure.
Jack’s sister Florence. Now you know her name.
LAURENCE.
“Jack’s sister Florence!” Never, Francis, never!
Jack, do you hear? Why, it was She I meant.
She like the country! Ah! she’s far too clever.
FRANK.
There you are wrong. I know her down in Kent.
LAURENCE.
You’ll get a sunstroke, standing with your head bare.
Sorry to differ. Jack, the word’s with you.
FRANK.
How is it, umpire? Though the motto’s threadbare,
“_Cœlum non animum_,” is, I take it, true.
JACK.
“_Souvent femme varie_,” as a rule, is truer.
Flatter’d, I’m sure—but both of you romance.
Happy to further suit of either wooer,
Merely observing—you haven’t got a chance.
LAURENCE.
Yes. But the Pipe—
FRANK.
The Pipe is what we care for.
JACK.
Well, in this case, I scarcely need explain.
Judgment of mine were indiscreet, and therefore—
Peace to you both.—The pipe I shall retain.
RIVER.
THREE rivers fell to strife, about their own renown,
Producing rival claims to wear the rivers’ crown.
Proud Amazon was one, and yellow Tiber next,
And third, an English Thames—all three most fierce and vex’d.