"As with its wings aslant
Sails the fierce cormorant
Seeking some rocky haunt,"
says Longfellow[1]—lines which, to me at least, call up a graphic picture of the bird, though I do not know that the first contains anything which is specially characteristic of it; and Milton has recorded—as we may, perhaps, assume—the way in which its uncouth shape appealed to him by making it that which his grand angel-devil chooses, on one occasion, to assume. On another one, it may be remembered, Satan takes for his purposes the form of a toad, and on each, no doubt, the poet, who never appears to yield to the strong temptation (as one would imagine) of loving his great creation, has intended to convey a general idea of fitness and symbolical similarity as between the disguised being and the disguise taken.
It has been conjectured that the habit which the cormorant has of standing for a length of time with its wings spread out and loosely drooping, suggested to Milton its appropriateness, and certainly there is an o'er-brooding, possession-taking appearance in this attitude of the bird, in keeping with the ideas which may be supposed to reign in Satan's breast as he looks down from the high tree of life upon the garden of Eden and its two newly created inhabitants. Independently of this, however, the bird, as it stands in its ordinary posture, firmly poised, the body not quite upright but inclined somewhat forward, with the curved neck and strong hooked beak thrown into bold relief—the dark webbed feet grasping firmly on the rock—has in it something suggestive both of
- ↑ See: Longfellow, H.W. - 'The Skeleton in Armour' (Wikisource Ed.)
