[183]. Hist. Nat. lib. vii. cap. 2.
[184]. Zeitschrift für Deutsches Alterthum, Bd. vii. p. 232.
The Homeric wild swan is Cycnus musicus, great numbers of which yearly exchange the frozen marshes of the North for the ‘silver lakes and rivers’ of Greece and Asia Minor. But the swan of the Epics sings no ‘sad dirge of her certain ending.’ Unmelodiously exultant, she flutters with the rest of the fluttering denizens of the Lydian water-meadows, in a scene full of animation.
And as the many tribes of feathered birds, wild geese or cranes or long-necked swans, on the Asian mead by Kaÿstros’ stream, fly hither and thither joying in their plumage, and with loud cries settle ever onwards, and the mead resounds; even so poured forth the many tribes of warriors from ships and huts into the Scamandrian plain.[[185]]
Nor do the
Smaller birds with song
Solace the woods
of Homeric landscapes; once only, the ‘solemn nightingale’ is permitted, in the story of the waiting of Penelope, ‘to pour her soft lays.’ ‘Even as when the daughter of Pandareus,’ the Ithacan queen tells the disguised Odysseus, ‘the brown bright nightingale, sings sweet in the first season of the spring, from her place in the thick leafage of the trees; and with many a turn and thrill she pours forth her full-voiced music bewailing her child, dear Itylus, whom on a time she slew with the sword unwitting, Itylus the son of Zethus the prince; even as her song, my troubled soul sways to and fro.’[[186]]
[185]. Iliad, ii. 459-63.
[186]. Odyssey, xix. 518-24.