and resignation and love for humanity. The words "before I have begun to live," really mean "before I have begun to live the higher moral life, which teaches us not to complain and never to hate." You might ask whether this is really a bird-poem-because birds are only mentioned three or four times in it. But originally this poem was entitled "On Hearing a Bird's Singing in Kensington Gardens”; and the whole composition appears to have been inspired as stated.

I believe that I have given you the cream, at least, of the English poetry about birds. But I need scarcely tell you that the subject is far from being exhausted. There are hosts of other poems about birds-not only English poems about English birds, but also English poems about foreign birds. They are not, however, of a high order, and we must leave the inferior orders alone for the present, or let them be sufficiently represented by a reference. Cowper's poem about the crow is not a second rate poem; but the kind is the humorous kind, and I quoted the poem for you last year. Thomson's poem contained lines about every kind of English bird-I refer especially to his descriptions of awakening life in "Spring"-and Thomson is a great poet. But he can not be justly represented here by a few lines, and it would be of small use to quote him by pages. Otherwise I doubt whether anything important has been overlooked.

I might mention, however, that some birds belong to literature in an emblematical way which might be worth some private study. The dove, for example, has long been the Christian emblem of the Holy Ghost-you may have remarked one beautiful reference to this in Rossetti's poem of "The Blessed Damozel." But I do not dwell on this matter, simply because it is most intimately related to Christian iconography, which is a subject for the specialist. Neither have I said much about the likening of angels to birds; or about the white wings given to angels in pictures and paintings. That also belongs to iconography. However, you

should at least remember the fact-otherwise you could scarcely appreciate the charming surprise of Browning's delightful address to the angel in the painting—“Thou Bird of God!"

In conclusion I think this much may be said: English poetry about birds represents a very large proportion of lyrical expression of the highest order. It is emotional or meditative poetry of the most complex kind at its best. Perhaps there is no other simple subject which poets have treated in a higher and more complex way.

CHAPTER XVI

POEMS ON NIGHT

THE MOON AND THE STARS

EARLY last term, one of my pupils asked me for a list of poems about the moon; and at that time I determined to give a lecture about moon-poetry as soon as possible. But I did not find the material quite so easily as I expected. Even now I must tell you that I have given up the idea of attempting a separate lecture about moon-poetry. The subject is, with western poets, too intimately related to the subject of Night for any separate treatment which could have much literary significance. So this lecture will be rather upon the subject of Night, generally speaking, than about the lights of heaven. But you will find the best moon poems scattered through it, and afterwards you can separate them if you wish. But I do not think that will be worth doing.

Compared with the multitude of Japanese and of Chinese poems about the moon, the number of good English poems on the same subject is rather small. Of course one could make an anthology of parts of poems about the moon-single lines, or fragments of two or three lines long. But the literary value of such little fragments would be chiefly a value of adjectives and verbs; in other words, a value depending upon form and upon choice of words, rather than upon thought and feeling. For English students such a collection of small fragments might have word-value; for you it would have scarcely any value at all-because to you the worth of western poetry must be in idea and in feeling, not in artistic word-carving.

So I shall quote complete poems only, and only those containing ideas of a striking character.

The subject of Night is necessarily the most sublime of all possible poetry; for the most sublime of all sights is the sight of the night sky. Let me be sure, to begin with, that you clearly understand the meaning of the word "sublime." It is often used by students with a very imperfect knowledge of its significance. The sublime in nature, in art, or in utterance is not the beautiful nor is it the great, nor is it the grand. It is much more than beautiful, than great, or than grand. It is that which gives the deepest and largest of all emotional feelings-a very deep pleasure and wonder, mingled with a sense of fear. Without the element of fear, there is no sense of the sublime. Many persons would prefer to use the word "awe"-not fear. But awe is fearthough this word is commonly applied to particular qualities or kinds of fear, such as religious fear or the fear of some tremendous power, like the power of the king. I prefer to use a word to which no special meanings are attached. Therefore I say fear. When you behold, whether in your mind only, or with your eyes, something so wonderful and so great and so beautiful that it makes you afraid to look at it and to think about it-that is an experience of the sublime. The sight of the sea in a great storm, or the sight of a tremendous range of mountains covered with eternal snow, may be called a sublime aspect. But how much more sublime is the sight of the sky at night, when there are no clouds, and all the stars appear sparklingly before you. A thousand years ago the night sky probably did not look so sublime to the eyes of man as it does to-day, because man then knew very little about the science of astronomy. But now through the acquisition of that science, we know that in looking at the starry sky we are looking into the infinite, and we know that each of those distant myriads of tiny points of light is really a far-off sun, probably surrounded by many worlds, more or less like our own. Then the thought of our

relation to the monstrous and endless universe fills us with that profound emotion which is called sublime. Indeed the sight of the night sky required a special word or term to describe; and the emotion that it gives us has been qualified by a particular psychological name. It is called Cosmic Emotion.

But even before men knew so much about the universe as every student in a middle school knows to-day, people wrote poems full of sublime feeling about the sky. I need not quote Biblical texts for various reasons-which I shall afterwards explain; I shall confine myself to modern poems. In all English literature I think that there is no poem about Night much finer as to thought and feeling than a poem with a Latin title written by William Habington in the first half of the seventeenth century—or to be more exact, between the years 1605 and 1645: