Birds of paradise

“ Oh never, never wish to see a dead Bird of Paradise in a hat, when you can see a living thrush or blackbird on the lawn of your garden, or a living swallow flying over it. And even if you can never see a living Bird of Paradise—as I daresay you never will be able to—what then?—what then? You cannot see everything, but have you not got an imagination (your mother, who has got one, will tell you what it is) , and is it not better to imagine a beautiful bird flying about in life and loveliness than to see it dead? ”

“ The bird himself is almost hidden in his own shower-bath, but the emerald throat and the yellow-plush head look out of it and gleam like jewels as he peeps and peers about from side to side to see if any one is looking at him. For, of course, the Great Bird of Paradise does not make himself so very beautiful just for nothing. ”

“ And now, if you were to ask a Bird of Paradise where it was he used to live, and why he had lost his voice and got his feathers scorched, he would not know one bit what you were talking about. In hundreds of thousands of years a great many things are forgotten, and the Birds of Paradise of to-day are quite happy. The earth is quite good enough for them, and if they were not shot and put into hats for the women with the frozen hearts to wear, they would have nothing to complain of. ”

“ Bird of Paradise whose feathers are really and truly blue, and I am quite sure that there is no other one—at least that we know of—which has so much blue about it, that you would think of it as a blue bird, or that has blue feather-fountains—those wonderful long silky plumes that grow out of each side under the wings.
That is what is most wonderful in the Blue Bird of Paradise. There is no other Bird of Paradise that can sit under a blue fountain or look out of a blue sunset. ”

“ That is because you cannot imagine how beautiful real Birds of Paradise are, for these Birds of Paradise were not more beautiful than the other ones that lived there. All were as beautiful as each other though in different ways, and it was just that which made these Birds of Paradise discontented. “If we go down to earth,” said they, “the birds of all the world will do homage to us on account of our superior beauty, for there will be none to equal us. ”

“ Had they been as accessible as sparrows, even although they equaled them in numbers, not one would by this time be alive on earth.
The family whose extraordinary dress and mystery of origin justify its name—Birds of Paradise—is securely hidden in distant islands not friendly to bird-hunting races. Inaccessible mountains and pathless forests repel the traveler; impassable ravines bar his advance; sickness and death lie in wait for the white man, while the native lurks with poisoned dart behind every bush. ”

“ You know those lovely plumes that I told you about, that the Great Bird of Paradise has growing from both his sides, under the wings, and how he lifts up his wings and shoots them right up into the air, so that they fall all over him, like two most beautiful fountains that meet in the air and mingle their waters together. ”

“ He worked out of my sight and hers, in the inner part of his garret, but the swallows saw and told me. There are never any secrets between birds and flowers.
We used to live in Paradise together, and we love one another as exiles do; and we hold in our cups the raindrops to slake the thirst of the birds, and the birds in return bring to us from many lands and over many waters tidings of those lost ones who have been torn from us to strike the roots of our race in far-off soils and under distant suns. ”

“ Paradise are, and how very beautiful they are, and you know how gloriously beautiful the Great Bird of Paradise is, and how it is killed and not allowed to live and be happy, just because it is so beautiful. But now these Great Birds of Paradise live only in some quite small islands and just in one part of one large one, and although there may be a good many of them where they do live, yet if they are always being killed in that way, very soon there will be no more of them left. ”

“ Strange birds fly out with a cry, to bathe Their wings in the sunset glory, While the shadows pass O’er the quiet face and the dewy grass.
God pity the bride who waits at home, With her lily cheeks and her violet eyes, Dreaming the sweet old dream of love, While her lover is walking in paradise! God strengthen her heart as the days go by, And the long, drear nights of her vigil follow, Nor bird, nor moon, nor whispering wind, May breathe the tale of the hollow ”

“ Only, when he actually hears it for the first time, the hearer makes the sad discovery that the bird he has for long years been listening to in fancy—the nightingale heard by the poet with an aching heart, and the wish that he, too, could fade with it into the forest dim—was a nightingale of the brain, a mythical bird, like the footless bird of paradise and the swan with a dying melody. ”

“ As I have told you, there are some forty or fifty different kinds of Birds of Paradise, and they are all of them as beautiful, or nearly as beautiful, as those that I have described, each one in its own special way. ”

“ It is at the rising and setting of the sun that the Bird of Paradise goes to seek its food. In the middle of the day it remains hidden under the ample foliage of the teak-tree, and comes not forth. He seems to dread the scorching heat of the sun, and to be unwilling to expose himself to the attacks of a rival. ”

“ Of course you must know yourself, or your mother will tell you, that all this wonderful beauty has not been given to these birds for nothing, and I have told you that the male Birds of Paradise, who alone have it, show it off to the poor hen birds, whose plumage is quite sober in comparison—though you must not think that they are not pretty birds too—because they are pretty, though in a quieter style. ”

“ Superb or Black Bird of Paradise—after his marvellous black plumage, that has all sorts of colours lying asleep in it—are two wonderful ornaments that he has, one on his head and one on his breast. The one on his head is the most wonderful. ”

“ While it would be untrue to say that the Birds of Paradise are of a more amorous, or more excitable disposition than other less resplendent birds, one cannot but be impressed with the fact that they exhibit a range of variation in the matter of feather-ornament probably unequalled, and certainly unsurpassed, by any other group of birds. ”

“ Now, the Birds of Paradise that live on the earth to-day do not live all over it, as they used to do in those old days when they could hear the lark and the nightingale. It is only a very small part of the world that they live in now—small, I mean, compared to the rest of it—and there are no larks or nightingales there. ”

“ Oh no, Birds of Paradise are not so common as that, even in their own country. They do not come into the towns, like sparrows, either, but live in the great forests where people do not often go, and even when one does go into them, it is difficult to see them amongst the great tall trees and the broad-fronded ferns and the long, hanging creepers that make a tangle from one tree to another. ”

“ They live a very long way off, it is true, right over at the other side of the world, but it is not quite so far off as Paradise is. No, it cannot be there that they live, because if you were to leave England in a ship and sail always in the right direction, you would come at last to the very place, instead of coming right round to England again, which is what you would do if you were to sail for Paradise—for you know, of course, that the earth is round. But why, then, are they called Birds of Paradise if they live here on the earth? ”

“ And you may be sure that they know exactly what to do with their beauty, how to raise up their crests and fan out their tails and ruffle out their gorgets and tippets in the way to make them look most magnificent, and give the greatest possible pleasure to their wives, who are all of them hermits—poor plain Humming-birds—just as the Birds of Paradise do for their wives, who are hermits too. ”

“ So the naked black man waits behind his screen for the Great Birds of Paradise to come, and as soon as they come and begin to spread their plumes, he shoots first one and then another of them with his great wooden arrows, and they fall down dead underneath the tree. ”

“ The Paris Figaro, in October, 1872, describing the ceremonies at the death of a gipsy in that city, mentioned that a bird was held close to the mouth of the dying girl, ready to receive her expired soul. This is not an illogical idea, if the conception of a person’s soul as a distinct entity is conceded; for if it is to fly away to Paradise it must have something in the nature of wings, and a bird, or the semblance of a real bird, is inevitably suggested, the wings of a bat being too repulsive—reserved, in fact, for representations of Satan and his emissaries. ”

“ And yet they are so handsome. That is because Dame Nature is such a wonderful workwoman. She can [Pg 59] make almost anything she tries to, out of any kind of material.
Now, I must tell you that the Great Bird of Paradise has two funny feathers like this in his tail too—feathers, I mean, without webs to them—only his ones have just a little web at the beginning and, again, at the very tips; all the part in between has none at all. ”

“ It was not till one hundred years after, when a writer and collector of birds visited the island, and spent years in watching and studying us, that the truth became known. Certainly, the gentleman must have laughed, when, instead of heavenly dew, he saw a Bird of Paradise catch a Grass-hopper and holding it firmly by his claws, trim it of wings and legs, then devour it, head first. Fruit and insects of all kinds we eat instead of dew and air. ”

“ The bird is called a ‘green fowl.’”
Quoting Keane: “It is a superstition among the Mohammedans that the spirits of martyrs are lodged in the crops of green birds, and partake of the fruit and drink of the rivers of paradise; also that the souls of the good dwell in the form of white birds near the throne of God.”
But the spirits represented in birds are not always ancestral or benevolent: they may be unpleasant, foreboding, demoniac. The Indians and negroes along the Amazons will not destroy goatsuckers. ”

“ There are moments in the soft, changing, growing, conceiving hours of dawn and sunset when Mother Nature heaves a long deep sigh of perfect peace, content and harmony. It is something of this that the wild birds voice, as they greet the sun at dawn, and again as they give sweet and melancholy notes at his sinking in the quiet of evening. Birds are impressed from without. They are reasonless, ecstatic, spontaneous, giving voice as accurately and joyously as they can to the vibrations of peace and harmony—to the Sounds, which they feel from Nature. ”

“ A light, restless wind has piled snowy, errant clouds above the mountain tops, the little green leaves are uncurling, the sun shining as it shines only in the spring and on an awakened world—and the birds——A lover bird, just the kind to capture a little lady bird’s heart, has been pouring out a passionate mating song for two whole days. ”

“ The wild-birds' song, the murmur of the streams
That through their heathery banks of fragrance glide.
All these are theirs—their solace, their delight;
Each with its charm of mystic beauty fraught;
The gleams that pierce the clouds of common life,
And let the light of Heaven's own sunshine in!
They have their dreams in twilight's shadowy hour,
When they can strike their golden lyre, and feel
The holy joy the poet calls his own. ”

“ nigh in her sight The bird of Jove, stooped from his aery tour, Two birds of gayest plume before him drove; ”

“ There are no animals in heaven as they are not needed. There will be no dogs, cats, swine, nor unclean birds, as eagles, hawks, and buzzards. But there are millions of brilliantly plumaged birds whose melodies continually ring through heaven. ”

“ The birds that fled last fall our wintry skies
People again the woods on joyous wing;
At dawn soft rustling pinions waken me,
And swallows darken window-pane and door;
Breathless I listen, gazing wistfully,
Alas, the bird I wait for comes no more.
A high ambition swept my pulses through;
Gazing one day upon the eagle’s flight,
I pierced with him the heaven’s o’erarching blue,
And beat my pinions at the gates of light.
To-day the bird of Jove alone defies
The sun-god’s burning glance, the tempest’s roar;
I watch his flight unmoved, with listless eyes,
The bird I fondly wait for comes no more. ”

“ Recount her virtues and pour forth her praise.
Hark! 'tis her voice, sweet as the wildbird's song;
She comes to tell me I have tarried long:
I hear her now an old love ditty hum,
And now she calls—I come, dear love, I come.
THE RETURN. Grateful to our sleepless eyes,
Lo, the beams of morn arise,
And the mountain-tops are gray
With the light of coming day,—
And the birds are on the wing.
With the happy birds we'll sing
Bidding doubt and gloom be gone,
Like the shadows at the dawn. ”