nightingale, Old World melodists, embalmed in Old World poetry, but
occasionally appearing on these shores, transported in the verse of
some callow singer.

The very oldest poets, the towering antique bards, seem to make
little mention of the song-birds. They loved better the soaring,
swooping birds of prey, the eagle, the ominous birds, the vultures,
the storks and cranes, or the clamorous sea-birds and the screaming
hawks. These suited better the rugged, warlike character of the
times and the simple, powerful souls of the singers themselves.
Homer must have heard the twittering of the swallows, the cry of
the plover, the voice of the turtle, and the warble of the
nightingale; but they were not adequate symbols to express what he
felt or to adorn his theme. Aeschylus saw in the eagle "the dog of
Jove," and his verse cuts like a sword with such a conception.

It is not because the old bards were less as poets, but that they
were more as men. To strong, susceptible characters, the music of
nature is not confined to sweet sounds. The defiant scream of the
hawk circling aloft, the wild whinny of the loon, the whooping of
the crane, the booming of the bittern, the vulpine bark of the
eagle, the loud trumpeting of the migratory geese sounding down out
of the midnight sky; or by the seashore, the coast of New Jersey or
Long Island, the wild crooning of the flocks of gulls, repeated,
continued by the hour, swirling sharp and shrill, rising and
falling like the wind in a storm, as they circle above the beach or
dip to the dash of the waves,--are much more welcome in certain
moods than any and all mere bird-melodies, in keeping as they are
with the shaggy and untamed features of ocean and woods, and
suggesting something like the Richard Wagner music in the