Par Avium.

Two little birds were sitting on a stone,
One flew away and then there was one,
T other flew away and then there was none,
So the poor stone was left all alone.

One of the little birds back again flew,
In came t other and then there were two;
Says one bird to t other, How do you do?
Very well, I thank you; pray how do you?

Fama est par avium venisse insistere saxo,
Quarum primâ abeunte superstitit inde secunda:
Illa autem fugiens jam vix vestigia liquit,
Et saxum mrens in campo luget inani.

Ecce autem rediens avium comparuit una,
Altera non segnis sociam complectitur almam:
Arreptâque manu, Quid agis dulcissima rerum?
Suaviter ut nunc est, et jam cupio omnia quæ vis.

Jacob Bigelow

Jacob Bigelow was an American physician, botanist, and botanical illustrator. He was instrumental in the founding of Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the first rural cemetery in the United States and a precursor to America's public parks. Bigelow was a leading advocate for modernizing medicine and medical education, focusing on practical medicine and scientific advancements. His contributions to botany include the publication of 'American Medical Botany,' which combined his medical knowledge with detailed botanical illustrations.

Jacob Bigelow

Rex Arthurus.

Jacob Bigelow, Simple Poetry

Ansercula.

Jacob Bigelow, Simple Poetry

Miles Redux.

Jacob Bigelow, Simple Poetry

Felis In Fidibus.

Jacob Bigelow, Simple Poetry

English

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My Aviary

Through my north window, in the wintry weather, -
My airy oriel on the river shore, -
I watch the sea-fowl as they flock together
Where late the boatman flashed his dripping oar.

The gull, high floating, like a sloop unladen,
Lets the loose water waft him as it will;
The duck, round-breasted as a rustic maiden,
Paddles and plunges, busy, busy still.

I see the solemn gulls in council sitting
On some broad ice-floe pondering long and late,
While overhead the home-bound ducks are flitting,
And leave the tardy conclave in debate,

Those weighty questions in their breasts revolving
Whose deeper meaning science never learns,
Till at some reverend elder's look dissolving,
The speechless senate silently adjourns.

But when along the waves the shr...

Oliver Wendell Holmes

Ansercula.

Goosey goosey gander,
Where shall you wander?
Up stairs, down stairs,
In my ladys chamber.

    Ansercula vagula, blandula,
    Quæ nunc abibis in loca?
    Sursum, deorsum,
    In dominæ cubiculum.

Jacob Bigelow

Grand Chorus of Birds from Aristophanes

Attempted in English verse after the original metre.

I was allured into the audacity of this experiment by consideration of a fact which hitherto does not seem to have been taken into consideration by any translator of the half divine humourist in whose incomparable genius the highest qualities of Rabelais were fused and harmonized with the supremest gifts of Shelley: namely, that his marvellous metrical invention of the anapæstic heptameter was almost exactly reproducible in a language to which all variations and combinations of anapæstic, iambic, or trochaic metre are as natural and pliable as all dactylic and spondaic forms of verse are unnatural and abhorrent. As it happens, this highest central interlude of a most adorable masterpiece is as easy to detach from its dramatic setting, and even from its lyrical context, as ...

Algernon Charles Swinburne

Birds
When our two souls have left this mortal clay
And, seeking mine, you think that mine is lost -
Look for me first in that Elysian glade
Where Lesbia is, for whom the birds sing most.

What happy hearts those feathered mortals have,
That sing so sweet when they're wet through in spring!
For in that month of May when leaves are young,
Birds dream of song, and in their sleep they sing.

And when the spring has gone and they are dumb,
Is it not fine to watch them at their play:
Is it not fine to see a bird that tries
To stand upon the end of every spray?

See how they tilt their pretty heads aside:
When women make that move they always please.
What cosy homes birds make in leafy walls
That Nature's love has ruined - and the trees.

Oft have I se...
William Henry Davies

Statio Tertia
The stream is very sweet
To-day . . . Just see the swallow dart!
How fleet!
It sent a shiver to my heart.
If he had lived, you say,
Well, well, if he had lived, what then?
Some men
Will always argue, yes, I know . . . of course . .
The argument has force.
If he had lived, he might have changed,
From bad to worse?
Nay, my shrewd balance-setter,
Why not from good to better?
Why not to best? to joy
And splendour? O, my boy!
I did not want this argument in the least,
My soul had ceased
From doubt and questioning,
That swallows wing!
What a transcendent rush!
Hush! hush!
Or, if you talk, talk low:
For . . . do you know . . .
Just as the swallow dipt,
I felt as if a soft hand slipt
Its fingers into mine hes near
He...
Thomas Edward Brown

The Birds
(To Edmund Gosse)

Within mankind's duration, so they say,
Khephren and Ninus lived but yesterday.
Asia had no name till man was old
And long had learned the use of iron and gold;
And æons had passed, when the first corn was planted,
Since first the use of syllables was granted.

Men were on earth while climates slowly swung,
Fanning wide zones to heat and cold, and long
Subsidence turned great continents to sea,
And seas dried up, dried up interminably,
Age after age; enormous seas were dried
Amid wastes of land. And the last monsters died.

Earth wore another face. O since that prime
Man with how many works has sprinkled time!
Hammering, hewing, digging tunnels, roads;
John Collings Squire, Sir