In many passages, to some of which I shall presently allude, the poet heightens the gloom of night by allusion to the nocturnal birds which screech or moan in the dark, or he lightens its eeriness with the pensive melody of the nightingale. Shakespeare was keenly alive to the strong contrasts so continually placed in juxtaposition by Nature――what he calls Melodious discord, heavenly tune harsh-sounding, Ear’s deep-sweet music, and heart’s deep-sore wounding.[39] He recognised contrasts of this kind both in the animate and the inanimate creation, and not least where the birds are involved: Unruly blasts wait on the tender spring; Unwholesome weeds take root with precious flowers; The adder hisses where the sweet birds sing, What virtue breeds iniquity devours.[40] He makes the Bishop of Ely account for the reformation of the Prince of Wales by calling attention to the association in Nature of what is baneful with what is profitable. The strawberry grows underneath the nettle, And wholesome berries thrive and ripen best Neighbour’d by fruit of baser quality: And so the Prince obscured his contemplation Under the veil of wildness; which, no doubt, Grew like the summer grass, fastest by night, Unseen, yet crescive in his faculty.[41] [Sidenote: _Contrasts in Nature_] The co-existence of pleasure and pain, of joy and sorrow, met the poet even among the tender creatures in whose songs he delighted. He saw that the grief or suffering of one single songster in no perceptible degree quieted the carolling of the rest of the choir. All thy fellow-birds do sing, Careless of thy sorrowing: Even so, poor bird, like thee, None alive will pity me.[42] He realised, as many another poet has also found, that there are times in which the joyous songs of birds may even sound harshly to human ears when the heart is bowed down with affliction. Thus he wrote of Lucrece: The little birds that tune their morning’s joy Make her moans mad with their sweet melody: For mirth doth search the bottom of annoy. * * * * * * * ‘You mocking birds,’ quoth she, ‘your tunes entomb Within your hollow-swelling feather’d breasts, And in my hearing be you mute and dumb: My restless discord loves no stops nor rests; A woeful hostess brooks not merry guests.’[43] While Shakespeare, like his poetical predecessors and contemporaries, regarded the whole tribe of birds as a great vocal assemblage, a delightful section of animated Nature, that gives life and charm to the countryside, his Poems and Plays stand apart for the remarkable extent to which he singles out individual birds by name, often with such detailed reference to their habits as to show that he well knew them in their native haunts. The birds thus distinguished by him amount to some fifty in number, as given in the following list: [Sidenote: _Birds mentioned by Him_]