“all hath suffered change;
For surely now our household hearths are cold:
Our sons inherit us: our looks are strange:
And we should come like ghosts to trouble joy.”
[64] The kingfisher is here meant, which, like other birds, puts on its best plumage in early spring—see “Locksley Hall”—
“In the spring a fuller crimson comes upon the robin’s breast;
In the spring the wanton lapwing gets himself another crest;
In the spring a livelier iris changes on the burnish’d dove.”
Longfellow sings in “It is not always May:”
“The sun is bright—the air is clear,
The darting swallows soar and sing,
And from the stately elms I hear
The blue-bird prophesying spring.”
I can positively say that the kingfisher is the bird to which the poet refers. Another parallel passage may be quoted:
“The fields made golden with the flower of March,
The throstle singing in the feather’d larch,
And down the river, like a flame of blue,
Keen as an arrow flies the water-king.”
“The little halcyon’s azure plume
Was never half so blue.”—Shenstone.
[65] Campbell says, “Coming events cast their shadows before.” The sun, by refraction, still appears in full size above the horizon, after it has really sunk below it; and reappears in full, when only just the upper edge has reached the horizon.
“As the sun,
Ere it is risen, sometimes paints its image
In the atmosphere, so often do the spirits
Of great events stride on before the events,
And in to-day already walks to-morrow.”
Death of Wallenstein, Act v. Scene i.