Tweet, tweet, tweet!
The birds cry out of the sky.
Tweet, tweet, tweet,
Mother I want to fly.
Up, and up, and up,
Above the poplars tall,
Mother, if I had wings,
I would fly and never fall!
The Mother speaks.
Sweet, sweet, sweet!
So the swallows are here again,
Flying over the village street,
And out to the open plain.
Sweet, sweet, sweet!
As they cried three springs ago,
When Will led me through the fields
Down to the church below.
Three years have come and gone,
Through warm summer and winter cold
I have carried his dinner afield,
And led the cattle to fold.
Three years have come and gone,
And my child is just two years old,
And the swallows are crying again Sweet, sweet,
And my tale is told.
Fleet, fleet, fleet,
Are those the swallows I hear?
The sound was sudden and sweet,
And this is the spring of the year.
To my dim eyes they seem
But a sudden light as they pass;
But I know how they skim o’er the stream,
And over the churchyard grass.
Their wings are a sudden light,
Thy tunes will not be long,
For my spirit is nearer its flight
Than that of the young and the strong;
Fleet, fleet, fleet, my days are waning fast,
I hear them cry, for out of the sky,
“There are wings for the soul at last.”
SWALLOWS.
A NEW season is begun. Parliament met to-day. London is getting full, and the price of coals has fallen. The celandine (swallow-flower) is beginning to cover the hedgerow banks of the Isle of Wight with yellow stars, and the swallows themselves will soon be with us again.
I may mention as another agreeable sign of spring the return of “Pen and Pencil,” not to the old nest, but under shelter of the old hospitality.
The Rhodians used to salute the return of the swallows with a traditional popular song, the Chelidonisma; perhaps some lady present may gratify us with a chant of the like purport. My own aim this evening is merely to give some brief natural history notes on the British swallows, drawn partly from books and partly from my own observation.
There are about sixty species of the family of Hirundinidæ, but only four kinds (counting the swift as one) are habitual visitors of the British Islands—the chimney swallow, the house martin, the bank martin (Hirundo rustica, urbica, and riparia), and fourthly the swift (Cypselus).