Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1882-11-11

POETS AND PARROTS.


Among the "caged birds" of poets, ex.
otics priced either fer song or plumage, are
the canary, cockatoo, macaw, and parrot.
Lyttelton rescues the first from total neg.
lect by his charming verse:
" bird for thee in silken bonds held
Whose yellow plumage shines like polished gold
From distant isles the lovely stranger came
And bears the fortunate Canarie's name"
Gay finds simile for Frenchmen in the
cockatoo:
Monkeys in action, paroquets in talk,
They crowned with feathers like cockatoo;"
and for courtiers in macaws. The parrots
poor wretches "cursed with postulating
resemblance to man, " find no friend or even
apologist But Sir William Jones-and he
knew this birds delightful Oriental asGo-
cistions-has a word of admiration for il !:
Z" Nor absent he who leaves the human sound
With wavy gold and moving emeralds crown'd
Whose head and breast with polish'd sapphires
glow,
And on whose wings the gems of Ird do grow.D
And again, in the hymn to Camdeo, the
Cupid of Hindostan,
:" o thou for ages born, vet ever young
For ages may thy Brahmins lay be sung
And when thy Tory spreads his emerald wings
To watt thee high above the tower of kings"
For the parrot is notable bird in the
East, and, above all, as the bird of love
and the steed Of the god of the blossom
headed SHOWS, eXacts the reverence of the
Hindoo millions. But in English poetry it
IS only the ape among the birds "an
odlUus libel on the human voice" Cow
per especially went out of his way to af-
front the parrot-slmply because it can be
taught to initiate human speech, and be-
cause it can only say as much as it is
taught! To base reproach against the
poet for such display of Immature may
seem trivial and whimsical enough, but if
many such instances of unnecessary and
commonplace prejudice are accumulated, it
is difficult to avoid the suspicion that the
poets perpetually Wanted sympathy
with Nature" does not really exist The
parrot is a bird Of extraordinary beauty
and astonishing intelligence Few feath-
cred things rival it in brilliance and variety
of 6Rsgss, and none in the size of its
bra okreover, it is emphatically a
creature of freedom and space, and re-
quires for its proper setting back ground
with at least grove of trees, or a great
sweep of open sky, or an old ruin, with
its battlement fretted by age into crevices
and loop hools-and, above all, it ia a crea.
ture of sunlight. Those who have heard
them gossipping together in pleasant soft
undersones. as they swung like blossoms
on the trees or have seen them, as if some
swift gust of wind had suddenly taken
color, sweep across an open space, never
think of parrots as mere old.m maids pets.
Indeed, for any one to do SO shows a lack
of tenderness toward Nature that is not
either attractive or poetical. 1t is we,
the men and women of a sunless coun.
try, that cage up parrots iu our small
rooms, and it seems hardly worthy, there
fore, of the poet of the Idol Lad to
sneer at the captive stranger,
Fraught with antics as the Indian bird,
That wrlthes aud chalters in her wiry cage"
Nor, seeing that it is human beings who
teach parrots the use and abuse of words,
does it seem to me fair Of the poets to
hang SO much prejudice against the bird on
such peg.