Shakspeare nobly likens our island to the eyrie of the royal bird:—
——————I’ the world’s volume
Our Britain seems as of it, but not in it;
In a great pool, a swan’s nest.
Nor can we fail to remember his beautiful allusions to the swan’s death-song. Portia orders “sweet music” during Bassanio’s deliberation on the caskets:—
Let music sound while he doth make his choice:
Then if he lose, he makes a swan-like end—
Fading in music.
And after the Moor has slain his innocent bride, Æmilia exclaims while her heart is breaking, and sings—
Hark, canst thou hear me? I will play the swan,
And die in music—Willow, willow, willow.
After “King John” is poisoned, his son, prince Henry, is told that in his dying frenzy “he sung,”—the prince answers—
———’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.
The muse of “Paradise” remarks, that