“Mark but the soaring kite, and she will reade
Brave rules for diet; teach thee how to feede;
She flies aloft; she spreads her ayrie plumes
Above the earth, above the nauseous fumes
Of dang’rous earth; she makes herself a stranger
T’ inferior things, and checks at every danger.”
Now, I like these lines. Not that I altogether approve of the sentiments therein expressed. I would not advise anyone, not even a German, to learn table manners from the kite. What I do like about the above is the splendid manner in which the poet strikes out a new line. [N.B.—The poets and their friends are strongly advised to omit the forty lines that follow.] The vulgar herd of poets can best be compared to a flock of sheep. One of them makes some wild statement about a bird, and all the rest plagiarise it. Not so Hurdis; he is no slavish imitator. He obviously knows nothing about the kite, but that is a trifle. If poets wrote only of things with which they were au fait, where would all our poetry be?
What Hurdis did know was that, as a general rule, when you want to write about a bird of which you know nothing, you are pretty safe in reading what the poets say about it, and then saying the very opposite. That in this particular case the rule does not hold good is Hurdis’s misfortune, not his fault. The kite happens to be almost the only bird about which the poets write correctly. This is a phenomenon I am totally unable to explain.
Cowper sang:
“Kites that swim sublime