A few years later Robert Herrick wrote:[1]
"When I departed am ring thou my knell,
Thou pittifull and pretty Philomel;
And when I'm laid out for a corse, then be
Thou sexton, Red brest, for to cover me."
I may be pardoned for repeating his prayer to Robin:[2]
"Laid out for dead, let thy last kindnesse be
With leaves and mosse-work for to cover me;
And while the wood nimphs my cold corps inter,
Sing thou my dirge, sweet warbling chorister.
For epitaph in foliage, next write this,
Here, here the tomb of Robin Herrick is."
In Webster's lines, and in many a popular rhyme, the robin and the wren are coupled as though they were natural helpmates; and with equal disregard of propriety Drayton[3] talks of—
"The gaudy Goldfinch and his courtly mate,
My Madam Bunting;"
but here, I suspect, there is some political allusion. He does, however, make the Wren,
"Which simple people call Our Lady's hen,"[4]
confess that Robin is not her lawful mate; a state of things which never used to be suspected in the nursery, whatever may be the case in these enlightened days. She also tells her gossip, the Hedge-sparrow, that when the Eagle oils his feathers[5] and soars aloft to confer with Jove, he unwittingly bears, concealed among his down, her nimble Robinet, who thus hears the secrets of Olympus, which, with untired wings, he carries back to his paramour;
"And by this means we two will rule the state."
Politics again, perhaps; but nevertheless there seems to be a savour of the old story of how the wren became king.[6] If I may tell it as I
- ↑ Poetical Works (Pickering's edition, 1825), vol. i. p. 154.
- ↑ Works, vol. i. p. 24.
- ↑ The Owl [iv. 1299].
- ↑ The Owl [iv. 1308].
- ↑ The Owl [iv. 1308-9]. Waterton flatly denies that birds do oil their feathers.—See Essays on Natural History, pp. 60-64:; 2nd series, p. 130, &c.; 3rd series, pp. 268-269.
- ↑ The spider of Krilof's fable, "The Eagle and the Spider," made use of the big bird in the same way as Drayton's robinet did, and as did the cunning wren of the story.—See Ralston's Krilof and his Fables, p. 107.
