The Eagle's Nest

189. The bird whose mythic history I am about to read to you belongs essentially and characteristically to that order of pies, picæ, or painted birds, which the Greeks continually opposed in their thoughts and traditions to the singing birds, representing the one by the magpie, and the other by the nightingale. The myth of Autolycus and Philammon, and Pindar’s exquisite story of the infidelity of Coronis, are the centres of almost countless traditions, all full of meaning, dependent on the various ποικιλία, to eye and ear, of these opposed races of birds. The Greek idea of the Halcyon united both these sources of delight. I will read you what notices of it I find most interesting, not in order of date, but of brevity; the simplest first.

190. “And the King of Trachis, the child of the Morning Star, married Alcyone. And they perished, both of them, through their pride; for the king called his wife, Hera; and she her husband, Zeus: but Zeus made birds of them (αὐτους ἀπωρνέωσε), and he made the one a Halcyon, and the other a Sea-mew.”—Appollodorus, i. 7, 4.

“When the King of Trachis, the son of Hesperus, or of Lucifer, and Philonis, perished in shipwreck, his wife Alcyone, the daughter of Æolus and Ægiale, for love of him, threw herself into the sea;—who both, by the mercy of the gods, were turned into the birds called Halcyons. These birds, in the winter-time, build their nests, and lay their eggs, and hatch their young on the sea; and the sea is quiet in those days, which the sailors call the Halcyonia.”—Hyginus, Fab. LXV.

191. “Now the King of Trachis, the son of Lucifer, had to wife Halcyone. And he, wishing to consult the oracle of Apollo concerning the state of his kingdom, was forbidden to go, by Halcyone, nevertheless he went; and perished by shipwreck. And when his body was brought to his wife Halcyone, she threw herself into the sea. Afterwards, by the mercy of Thetis and Lucifer, they were both turned into the sea-birds called Halcyons. And you ought to know that Halcyone is the woman’s name, and is always a feminine noun; but the bird’s name is Halcyon, masculine and feminine, and so also its plural, Halcyones. Also those birds make their nests in the sea, in the middle of winter; in which days the calm is so deep that hardly anything in the sea can be moved. Thence, also, the days themselves are called Halcyonia.”—Servius, in Virg. Georg. i. 399.

192. “And the pairing of birds, as I said, is for the most part in spring time, and early summer; except the halcyon’s. For the halcyon has its young about the turn of days in winter, wherefore, when those days are fine, they are called ‘Halcyonine’ (ἀλκυόνειοι); seven, indeed, before the turn, and seven after it, as Simonides poetized, (ἐποίησεν).

‘As, when in the wintry monthZeus gives the wisdom of calm to fourteen days,Then the people of the land call itThe hour of wind-hiding, the sacredNurse of the spotted Halcyon.’

“And in the first seven days the halcyon is said to lay her eggs, and in the latter seven to bring forth and nourish her young. Here, indeed, in the seas of Greece, it does not always chance that the Halcyonid days are at the solstice; but in the Sicilian sea, almost always. But the æthuia and the laros bring forth their young, (two, or three) among the rocks by the sea-shore; but the laros in summer, the æthuia in first spring, just after the turn of days; and they sit on them as other birds do. And none of these birds lie torpid in holes during the winter; but the halcyon is, of all, seen the seldomest, for it is seen scarcely at all, except just at the setting and turn of Pleias, and then it will but show itself once, and away; flying, perhaps, once round a ship at anchor, and then it is gone instantly.”—Aristotle, Hist. Av., v. 8, 9.

193. “Now we are ready enough to extol the bee for a wise creature, and to consent to the laws by which it cares for the yellow honey, because we adore the pleasantness and tickling to our palates that is in the sweetness of that; but we take no notice of the wisdom and art of other creatures in bringing up their young, as for instance, the halcyon, who as soon as she has conceived, makes her nest by gathering the thorns of the sea-needle-fish; and, weaving these in and out, and joining them together at the ends, she finishes her nest; round in the plan of it, and long, in the proportion of a fisherman’s net; and then she puts it where it will be beaten by the waves, until the rough surface is all fastened together and made close. And it becomes so hard that a blow with iron or stone will not easily divide it; but, what is more wonderful still, is that the opening of the nest is made so exactly to the size and measure of the halcyon that nothing larger can get into it, and nothing smaller!—so they say;—no, not even the sea itself, even the least drop of it.”—Plutarch: De Amore Prolis.

I have kept to the last Lucian’s dialogue, “the Halcyon,” to show you how the tone of Christian thought, and tradition of Christ’s walking on the sea, began to steal into heathen literature.

Socrates—Chaerephon

194. “Chaerephon. What cry is that, Socrates, which came to us from the beach? how sweet it was; what can it be? the things that live in the sea are all mute.

“Socrates. Yet it is a sea-creature, Chaerephon; the bird called Halcyon, concerning which the old fable runs that she was the daughter of Æolus, and, mourning in her youth for her lost husband, was winged by divine power, and now flies over the sea, seeking him whom she could not find, sought throughout the earth.

“Chaerephon. And is that indeed the Halcyon’s cry? I never heard it yet; and in truth it is very pitiful. How large is the bird, Socrates?

“Socrates. Not great; but it has received great honour from the Gods, because of its lovingness; for while it is making its nest, all the world has the happy days which it calls halcyonidæ, excelling all others in their calmness, though in the midst of storm; of which you see this very day is one, if ever there was. Look, how clear the sky is, and the sea waveless and calm, like a mirror!

“Chaerephon. You say truly, and yesterday was just such another. But in the name of the Gods, Socrates, how is one to believe those old sayings, that birds were ever changed into women, or women into birds, for nothing could seem more impossible?

195. “Socrates. Ah, dear Chaerephon, it is likely that we are poor and blunt judges of what is possible and not: for we judge by comparing to human power a power unknown to us, unimaginable, and unseen. Many things, therefore, that are easy, seem to us difficult; and many things unattainable that may be attained; being thus thought of, some through the inexperience, and some through the infantine folly, of our minds. For in very deed every man may be thought of as a child—even the oldest of us,—since the full time of life is little, and as a baby’s compared to universal time. And what should we have to say, my good friend, who know nothing of the power of gods or of the spirits of Nature, whether any of such things are possible or not? You saw, Chaerephon, what a storm there was, the day before yesterday; it makes one tremble even to think of it again;—that lightning, and thunder, and sudden tempest, so great that one would have thought all the earth falling to ruin; and yet, in a little while, came the wonderful establishing of calm, which has remained even till now. Whether, then, do you think it the greater work, to bring such a calm out of that tormenting whirlwind, and reduce the universe to peace, or to change the form of a woman into that of a bird? For indeed we see how very little children, who know how to knead clay, do something like this also; often out of one lump they will make form after form, of different natures: and surely to the spirit-powers of Nature, being in vast and inconjecturable excess beyond ours, all such things must be in their hands easy. Or how much do you think heaven greater than thyself—can you say, perchance?

“Chaerephon. Who of men, O Socrates, could imagine or name any of these things?

196. “Socrates. Nay; do we not see also, in comparing man with man, strange differences in their powers and imbecilities? for complete manhood, compared with utter infancy, as of a child five or ten days old, has difference in power, which we may well call miraculous: and when we see man excel man so far, what shall we say that the strength of the whole heaven must appear, against ours, to those who can see them together, so as to compare them? Also, to you and me, and to many like us, sundry things are impossible that are easy to other people; as singing to those ignorant of music, and reading or writing to those ignorant of letters;—more impossible than to make women birds, or birds of women. For Nature, as with chance throw, and rough parable, making the form of a footless and wingless beast in changeable matter; then putting on feet and wings, and making it glitter all over with fair variegation and manifold colour, at last brings out, for instance, the wise bee, maker of the divine honey; and out of the voiceless and spiritless egg she brings many kinds of flying and foot-going and swimming creatures, using besides (as runs the old Logos) the sacred art of the great Aether.8 We then, being altogether mortal and mean, and neither able to see clearly great things nor small, and, for the most part being unable to help ourselves even in our own calamities,—what can we have to say about the powers of the immortals, either over halcyons or nightingales? But the fame of fable such as our fathers gave it to us, this, to my children, O thou bird singing of sorrow, I will deliver concerning thy hymns: and I myself will sing often of this religious and human love of thine, and of the honour thou hast for it from the Gods. Wilt not thou do likewise, O Chaerephon?

“Chaerephon. It is rightly due indeed, O Socrates, for there is two-fold comfort in this, both for men and women, in their relations with each other.

“Socrates. Shall we not then salute the halcyon, and so go back to the city by the sands, for it is time?

“Chaerephon. Indeed let us do so.”

197. The note of the scholiast on this dialogue is the only passage in which I can find any approximately clear description of the Greek halcyon. It is about as large, he says, as a small sparrow; (the question how large a Greek sparrow was we must for the present allow to remain open;) and it is mixed of green and blue, with gleaming of purple above, and it has a slender and long beak: the beak is said to be “chloros,” which I venture to translate “green,” when it is used of the feathers, but it may mean anything, used of the beak. Then follows the same account as other people’s, of the nest-building, except that the nest is compared in shape to a medicinal gourd. And then the writer goes on to say that there are two species of halcyons—one larger than the other, and silent, but the smaller, fond of singing (ᾠδική); and that the females of these are so true to their mates that, when the latter grow old, the female bird flies underneath them, and carries them wherever they would like to go; and after they die will not eat nor drink anything, and so dies too. “And there is a certain kind of them, of which, if any one hear the voice, it is an altogether true sign to him that he will die in a short time.”

198. You will, I think, forgive me, if after reading to you these lovely fables, I do not distract you, or detain, with the difficult investigation of the degree in which they are founded on the not yet sufficiently known facts of the Kingfisher’s life.

I would much rather that you should remain impressed with the effect which the lovely colour and fitful appearance of the bird have had on the imagination of men. I may satisfy you by the assurance that the halcyon of England is also the commonest halcyon of Greece and of Palestine; and I may at once prove to you the real gain of being acquainted with the traditions of it, by reading to you two stanzas, certainly among the most familiar to your ears in the whole range of English poetry; yet which, I am well assured, will sound, after what we have been reflecting upon to-day, almost as if they were new to you. Note especially how Milton’s knowledge that Halcyone was the daughter of the Winds, and Ceyx the son of the Morning Star, affects the course of his thought in the successive stanzas—

“But peaceful was the night,Wherein the Prince of lightHis reign of peace upon earth began:The winds with wonder whist,Smoothly the waters kist,Whispering new joys to the mild ocean,Who now hath quite forgot to rave,While birds of calm sit brooding on the charmèd wave.“The stars, with deep amaze,Stand fix’d in steadfast gaze,Bending one way their precious influence;And will not take their flight,For all the morning lightOf Lucifer, that often warn’d them thence;But in their glimmering orbs did glow,Until their Lord Himself bespake, and bid them go.”

199. I should also only weary you if I attempted to give you any interpretation of the much-entangled web of Greek fables connected with the story of Halcyone. You observe that in all these passages I have said “King of Trachis” instead of Ceyx. That is partly because I don’t know how to pronounce Ceyx either in Greek or English; but it is chiefly to make you observe that this story of the sea-mew and Halcyon, now known through all the world, like the sea-mew’s cry, has its origin in the “Rough country,” or crag-country, under Mount Œta, made sacred to the Greek mind by the death of Heracles; and observe what strange connection that death has with the Halcyon’s story. Heracles goes to this “Rough country” to seek for rest; all the waves and billows of his life having—as he thinks now—gone over him. But he finds death.

As far as I can form any idea of this “rough, or torn, country” from the descriptions of Colonel Leake or any other traveller, it must resemble closely the limestone cliffs just above Altorf, which break down to the valley from the ridge of the Windgelle, and give source, at their foot, to faultlessly clear streams,—green-blue among the grass.

You will find Pausanias noting the springs of Thermopylæ as of the bluest water he ever saw; and if you fancy the Lake Lucerne to be the sea bay running inland from Artemisium, you will have a clear and useful, nor in any serious way, inaccurate, image of the scene where the Greeks thought their best hero should die. You may remember also, with advantage, that Morgarten—the Thermopylæ of Switzerland—lies by the little lake of Egeri, not ten miles from this bay of Altorf; and that the Heracles of Switzerland is born under those Trachinian crags.

If, farther, you remember that the Halcyon would actually be seen flitting above the blue water of the springs, like one of their waves caught up and lighted by the sun; and the sea-mews haunting the cliffs, you will see how physical circumstances modify the under-tone of the words of every mythic tradition.

I cannot express to you how strange—how more and more strange every day—it seems to me, that I cannot find a single drawing, nor definite account, of scenes so memorable as this, to point you to; but must guess and piece their image together for you as best I can from their Swiss similitudes. No English gentleman can pass through public school-life without knowing his Trachiniæ; yet I believe, literally, we could give better account of the forms of the mountains in the moon, than we could of Œta. And what has art done to help us? How many Skiddaws or Benvenues, for one Œta,—if one! And when the English gentleman becomes an art-patron, he employs his painter-servant only to paint himself and his house; and when Turner was striving, in his youth, to enforce the mythology, and picture these very scenes in Greece, and putting his whole strength into the endeavour to conceive them, the noble pictures remained in his gallery; and for bread, he had to paint – Hall, the seat of –, Esquire, with the carriage drive, the summer-house, and the squire going out hunting.

If, indeed, the squire would make his seat worth painting, and would stay there, and would make the seats, or, shall we call them, forms, of his peasantry, worth painting too, he would be interpreting the fable of the Halcyon to purpose.

But you must, at once, and without any interpreter, feel for yourselves how much is implied in those wonderful words of Simonides—written six hundred years before Christ;—“when in the wild winter months, Zeus gives the wisdom of calm;” and how much teaching there is for us in the imagination of past days,—this dream-picture of what is true in days that are, and are to come,—that perfect domestic love not only makes its nest upon the waves, but that the waves will be calm that it may.

200. True, I repeat, for all ages, and all people, that, indeed, are desirous of peace, and loving in trouble! But what fable shall we invent, what creature on earth or sea shall we find, to symbolize this state of ours in modern England? To what sorrowful birds shall we be likened, who make the principal object of our lives dispeace, and unrest; and turn our wives and daughters out of their nests, to work for themselves?

Nay, strictly speaking, we have not even got so much as nests to turn them out of. I was infinitely struck, only the other day, by the saying of a large landed proprietor (a good man, who was doing all he could for his tenantry, and building new cottages for them), that the best he could do for them, under present conditions of wages, and the like, was, to give them good drainage and bare walls.

“I am obliged,” he said to me, “to give up all thought of anything artistic, and even then, I must lose a considerable sum on every cottage I build.”

201. Now, there is no end to the confused states of wrong and misery which that landlord’s experience signifies. In the first place, no landlord has any business with building cottages for his people. Every peasant should be able to build his own cottage,—to build it to his mind; and to have a mind to build it too. In the second place, note the unhappy notion which has grown up in the modern English mind, that wholesome and necessary delight in what is pleasant to the eye, is artistic affectation. You have the exponent of it all in the central and mighty affectation of the Houses of Parliament. A number of English gentlemen get together to talk; they have no delight whatever in any kind of beauty; but they have a vague notion that the appointed place for their conversation should be dignified and ornamental; and they build over their combined heads the absurdest and emptiest piece of filigree,—and, as it were, eternal foolscap in freestone,—which ever human beings disgraced their posterity by. Well, all that is done, partly, and greatly, in mere jobbery; but essentially also in a servile imitation of the Hôtel-de-Ville builders of old time; but the English gentleman has not the remotest idea that when Hôtels-de-Ville were built, the ville enjoyed its hotel;—the town had a real pride in its town hall, and place of council, and the sculptures of it had precious meaning for all the populace.

202. And in like manner, if cottages are ever to be wisely built again, the peasant must enjoy his cottage, and be himself its artist, as a bird is. Shall cock-robins and yellow-hammers have wit enough to make themselves comfortable, and bullfinches peck a Gothic tracery out of dead clematis,—and your English yeoman be fitted by his landlord with four dead walls and a drain-pipe? That is the result of your spending 300,000l. a year at Kensington in science and art, then? You have made beautiful machines, too, wherewith you save the peasant the trouble of ploughing and reaping, and threshing; and after being saved all that time and toil, and getting, one would think, leisure enough for his education, you have to lodge him also, as you drop a puppet into a deal box, and you lose money in doing it! and two hundred years ago, without steam, without electricity, almost without books, and altogether without help from “Cassell’s Educator” or the morning newspapers, the Swiss shepherd could build himself a châlet, daintily carved, and with flourished inscriptions, and with red and blue and white ποικιλία; and the burgess of Strasburg could build himself a house like this I showed you, and a spire such as all men know; and keep a precious book or two in his public library, and praise God for all: while we,—what are we good for, but to damage the spire, knock down half the houses, and burn the library,—and declare there is no God but Chemistry?

203. What are we good for? Are even our machines of destruction useful to us? Do they give us real power? Once, indeed, not like halcyons, but like sea-eagles, we had our homes upon the sea; fearless alike of storm or enemy, winged like the wave petrel; and as Arabs of an indeed pathless desert, we dwelt in the presence of all our brethren. Our pride is fallen; no reed shaken with the wind, near the little singing halcyon’s nest, is more tremulous than we are now; though we have built iron nests on the sea, with walls impregnable. We have lost our pride—but have we gained peace? Do we even care to seek it, how much less strive to make it?

204. Have you ever thought seriously of the meaning of that blessing given to the peace-makers? People are always expecting to get peace in heaven; but you know whatever peace they get there will be ready made. Whatever making of peace they can be blest for, must be on the earth here: not the taking of arms against, but the building of nests amidst, its ”sea of troubles.“ Difficult enough, you think? Perhaps so, but I do not see that any of us try. We complain of the want of many things—we want votes, we want liberty, we want amusement, we want money. Which of us feels, or knows, that he wants peace?

205. There are two ways of getting it, if you do want it. The first is wholly in your own power; to make yourselves nests of pleasant thoughts. Those are nests on the sea indeed, but safe beyond all others; only they need much art in the building. None of us yet know, for none of us have yet been taught in early youth, what fairy palaces we may build of beautiful thought—proof against all adversity. Bright fancies, satisfied memories, noble histories, faithful sayings, treasure-houses of precious and restful thoughts, which care cannot disturb, nor pain make gloomy, nor poverty take away from us—houses built without hands, for our souls to live in.

206. And in actual life, let me assure you, in conclusion, the first ‘wisdom of calm,’ is to plan, and resolve to labour for, the comfort and beauty of a home such as, if we could obtain it, we would quit no more. Not a compartment of a model lodging-house, not the number so-and-so of Paradise Row; but a cottage all of our own, with its little garden, its pleasant view, its surrounding fields, its neighbouring stream, its healthy air, and clean kitchen, parlours, and bedrooms. Less than this, no man should be content with for his nest; more than this few should seek: but if it seem to you impossible, or wildly imaginary, that such houses should ever be obtained for the greater part of the English people, again believe me, the obstacles which are in the way of our obtaining them are the things which it must be the main object now of all true science, true art, and true literature to overcome. Science does its duty, not in telling us the causes of spots in the sun; but in explaining to us the laws of our own life, and the consequences of their violation. Art does its duty, not in filling monster galleries with frivolous, or dreadful, or indecent pictures; but in completing the comforts and refining the pleasures of daily occurrence, and familiar service: and literature does its duty, not in wasting our hours in political discussion, or in idle fiction; but in raising our fancy to the height of what may be noble, honest, and felicitous in actual life;—in giving us, though we may ourselves be poor and unknown, the companionship of the wisest fellow-spirits of every age and country,—and in aiding the communication of clear thoughts and faithful purposes, among distant nations, which will at last breathe calm upon the sea of lawless passion, and change into such halcyon days the winter of the world, that the birds of the air may have their nests in peace, and the Son of Man, where to lay His head.

LECTURE X.