“Truth shall nurse her, Holy and heavenly thoughts still counsel her: She shall be loved and fear’d: her own shall bless her; Her foes shake like a field of beaten corn, And hang their heads with sorrow. Good grows with her: In her days every man shall eat in safety, Under his own vine, what he plants, and sing The merry songs of peace to all his neighbours: God shall be truly known; and those about her From her shall read the perfect ways of honour, And by these claim their greatness, not by blood. Nor shall this peace sleep with her; but, as when The bird of wonder dies, the maiden phœnix, Her ashes new create another heir, As great in admiration as herself, So shall she leave her blessedness to one— When heaven shall call her from this cloud of darkness— Who from the sacred ashes of her honour Shall star-like rise, as great in fame as she was, And so stand fix’d.” There is another bird, the emblem of tranquillity and of peaceful and happy days; it is the KING-FISHER, which the poets have described with the utmost embellishment of the fancy. Aristotle and Pliny tell even more marvellous tales about it than Herodotus and Horapollo do about the Phœnix. The fable, on which the poetic idea rests, is two-fold; one that Alcyone, a daughter of the wind-god Æolus, had been married to Ceyx; and so happily did they live that they gave one another the appellations of the gods, and by Jupiter in anger were changed into birds; the other narrates, that Ceyx perished from shipwreck, and that in a passion of grief Alcyone threw herself into the sea. Out of pity the gods bestowed on the two the shape and habit of birds. Ovid has greatly enlarged the fable, and has devoted to it, in his _Metamorphoses_ (xi. 10), between three and four hundred lines. We have only to do with the conclusion,— “The gods at length taking compassion The pair are transformed into birds; tried by one destiny Their love remained firm; nor is the conjugal bond Loosened although they are birds; parents they become, And through a seven days’ quietness in midwinter In nests upborne by the sea the King-fishers breed. Safe then is the sea-road; the winds Æolus guards, Debarring from egress; and ocean’s plain favours his children.” According to Aristotle’s description (_Hist. Anim._ ix. 14),— “The nest of the Alcyon is globular, with a very narrow entrance, so that if it should be upset the water would not enter. A blow from iron has no effect upon it, but the human hand soon crushes it and reduces it to powder. The eggs are five.”