or—as yet another poem shows—to take as a scholar:
I dreamt by me I saw fair Venus stand,
Holding young Cupid in her lovely hand,
And said, kind Shepherd, I a scholar bring
My little son, to learn of you to sing....
And last, the pelican (in stanza 7). She was supposed in old days to be "the lovingest bird that is," since at need she would pierce her breast with her bill to feed her young ones. The plaintive singing of the dying swan I have never heard, except in Tennyson's words:
The plain was grassy, wild and bare,
Wide, wild, and open to the air,
Which had built up everywhere