“And the swallow ’ll come back again with summer o’er the wave.”
It has been long considered lucky for the swallow to build its nest on the roof of a house, but just as unlucky for it to forsake a place which it has once tenanted. Shakespeare probably had this superstition in his mind when he represents Scarus as saying, in “Antony and Cleopatra” (iv. 12):
“Swallows have built
In Cleopatra’s sails their nests: the augurers
Say, they know not,—they cannot tell;—look grimly,
And dare not speak their knowledge.”
Swan. According to a romantic notion, dating from antiquity, the swan is said to sing sweetly just before its death, many pretty allusions to which we find scattered here and there throughout Shakespeare’s plays. In “Merchant of Venice” (iii. 2), Portia says:
“he makes a swan-like end,
Fading in music.”
Emilia, too, in “Othello” (v. 2), just before she dies, exclaims:
“I will play the swan,
And die in music.”
In “King John” (v. 7), Prince Henry, at his father’s death-bed, thus pathetically speaks:
“’Tis strange that death should sing.
I am the cygnet to this pale faint swan,
Who chants a doleful hymn to his own death,
And from the organ-pipe of frailty sings
His soul and body to their lasting rest.”
Again, in “Lucrece” (1611), we have these touching lines: