Why she not marvels, strenuously beating
The silent boundless regions of the sky!
He has watched the heavy-winged osprey in its haunts, fain to fly,
but forced the earth his couch to make
Far inland, till his friend the tempest wake,
on whose fiercer wings he can flap his own into activity.
In Caliban upon Setebos, as would naturally be the case, animal life is everywhere; and how close to truth, how keenly observed it is, how the right points for description are chosen to make us feel the beast and bird in a single line; how full of colour, how flashed into words which seem like colours, the descriptions are, any animal-lover may hear in the few lines I quote:
Yon otter, sleek-wet, black, lithe as a leech;
Yon auk, one fire-eye in a ball of foam,
That floats and feeds; a certain badger brown