With bootless labour swim against the tide
And spend her strength with overmatching waves.[176]
The time-honoured legend that the “death-divining swan” utters a musical note or wail at the time of dying is repeatedly alluded to by the poet, and sometimes as if it were a reality. Lucrece, at her approaching death, like a
Pale swan in her watery nest,
Begins the sad dirge of her certain ending.[177]
Prince Henry, son of King John, when told that his dying father had been singing, muses thus:
’Tis strange that death should sing:
I am the cygnet to this pale faint swan
Who chants a doleful hymn to his own death.[178]
In the scene wherein Othello discovers the double-dyed villainy of Iago, a touching incident is the wandering language of the faithful dying Emilia, whose mind goes back to her beloved mistress: