"Now sings the woodland loud and long,
And distance takes a lovelier hue,
And drowned in yonder living blue
The lark becomes a sightless song."

And again in this from "A Dream of Fair Women:"--

"Then I heard
A noise of some one coming through the lawn,
And singing clearer than the crested bird
That claps his wings at dawn."

The swallow is a favorite bird with Tennyson, and is frequently
mentioned, beside being the principal figure in one of those
charming love-songs in "The Princess." His allusions to the birds,
as to any other natural feature, show him to be a careful observer,
as when he speaks of

"The swamp, where hums the dropping snipe."

His single bird-poem, aside from the song I have quoted, is "The
Blackbird," the Old World prototype of our robin, as if our bird
had doffed the aristocratic black for a more democratic suit on
reaching these shores. In curious contrast to the color of its
plumage is its beak, which is as yellow as a kernel of Indian corn.
The following are the two middle stanzas of the poem:--

"Yet, though I spared thee all the spring,
Thy sole delight is, sitting still,
With that gold dagger of thy bill