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all harmony—the music of nature. I often listen to the happy creatures, singing so merrily in their greenwood haunts, and flitting airily along in search of materials for their nests, those wonderful little things! or looking for food for the young callow brood within; and I do marvel how any being can be so wantonly cruel, how any spirit can be so blind to the glory and happiness of nature, as to ensnare or destroy creatures so harmless, so glad, so beautiful, as birds.
The fathers of English poetry have so landed this, their favourite season, in undying verse, that of all poetical subjects, "Spring" has perhaps the least chance of receiving any thing like original treatment at the hands of their descendants, who must not only shrink to stars of small magnitude indeed beside the greater luminaries, but be content to appear, for the most part, as shining only with reflected light.
The Bards of old looked on nature with the eye of the naturalist, the fancy of the poet, and the grace of the painter. The simplest flower, or the most trivial incident, is described by the pencilling picture-like verse of Chaucer with a bright, clear, gleesome expression, only equalled in its peculiar beauty by his simple, impressive, and touching pathos. He revelled in the merry Spring-time, and many are the bright and sparkling descriptions of reviving nature which he has left us, telling how
The shoures sote of rain descended soft
Causing the ground fele timis and oft,
Up for to give many an wholesome air;
And every plain was y-clothed faire
