The bream is the familiar and homely sparrow, which makes her nest everywhere, and is early and late.
The pickerel is the hawk, a fish of prey, hovering over the finny broods.
The pout is the owl, which steals so noiselessly about at evening with its clumsy body.
The shiner is the summer yellowbird, or goldfinch, of the river.
The sucker is the sluggish bittern, or stake-driver.
The minnow is the hummingbird.
The trout is the partridge woodpecker.
The perch is the robin.[504]
We read Marlowe as so much poetical pabulum. It is food for poets, water from the Castalian Spring, some of the atmosphere of Parnassus, raw and crude indeed, and at times breezy, but pure and bracing. Few have so rich a phrase! He had drunk deep of the Pierian Spring, though not deep enough, and had that fine madness, as Drayton says,
"Which justly should possess a poet's brain."