| Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). A Victorian Anthology, 1837–1895. 1895. |
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| From “The Paradise of Birds.” III. In Praise of Gilbert White |
| | | William John Courthope (b. 1842) |
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| IF Transmigration e’er compel | |
| A bird to live with human heart, | |
| I pray that bird have choice to dwell | |
| From human ills apart. | |
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| When swallows through the world went forth, | 5 |
| And watch’d affairs in every nation, | |
| They found for ever, south and north, | |
| Vanity and Vexation. | |
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| So let him dwell not in the Town— | |
| There Trade and Penury roar and weep: | 10 |
| But ’neath the silence of a down | |
| Disturb’d by grazing sheep. | |
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| There, like his brook, his life shall glide, | |
| Far from State-party, plot, and treason, | |
| Nor feel the flow of Fortuue’s tide, | 15 |
| Beyond the change of season. | |
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| There he shall Learning woo, and Art, | |
| Without a rival to unthrone; | |
| Nor seek to pain another’s heart, | |
| Since he may please his own. | 20 |
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| Books he shall read in hill and tree; | |
| The flowers his weather shall portend, | |
| The birds his moralists shall be, | |
| And everything his friend. | |
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| Such man in England I have seen; | 25 |
| He mov’d my heart with fresh delight; | |
| And had I not the swallow been, | |
| I had been Gilbert White. | |
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