Paulo Ucello/Chapter 3
CHAPTER III
How this same wall was painted by him with all manner of birds that he might take delight in looking upon them, since he could not own them.
AND birds there were: birds, birds on every hand,
That the good man had seen, and loved, and could
Not buy: on bough and blade, on stream and land:
With tuft, with necklet and with crested hood,
From the wide ocean or from mountain height,
Dwellers in hill and valley, brake and wood;
On wings of snow and fire, of air and light;
Green, golden, crimson, blue their feathers gay;
Homing with grub or fly captured in flight.
Armies of cranes from mists fled fast away;
On the still waters of the azure stream
Fleets of white swans oared their majestic way.
Each swallow sped to its familiar beam;
And the brown eagle, soaring high above,
Swooped down on them in vain, too far to seem
A danger, even to the quail, nor move
To fear with the loud rumble of its wings
The pigeon or the fearful turtle-dove.
Safe on the bushes of the moorland nesting,
Secure upon the rushes of the fen,
Perched undisturbed the nightingale and lapwing,
Tom-tit and sea-gull, cuckoo, finch and wren.