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This is his song, or what answers to a song, but I have seen him when he would do nothing but repeat incessantly a quick trisyllabic call, whit, whit, whit; corresponding, I suppose, to the well-known whit with which the phoebe sometimes busies himself in a similar manner.
On this principle, the trisyllabic Tin-tun-ling must have been without much honour in his own country. In Paris, however, he has learned Parisian aplomb, and when confronted with his judges and his accusers, his air, we learn, "was very calm." "His smile it was pensive and bland," like the Heathen Chinee's, and his calm confidence was justified by events.
The dangerous repetitions of "roses, roses," "tired, tired," &c., come all right; and above all he has the flexibility and quiver of metre that he too often lacks. His trisyllabic interspersions the leap in the vein that makes iambic verse alive and passionate are as happy as they can be, and the relapse into the uniform dissyllabic gives just the right contrast.
Even had the poem been meant for singing, which it was not, for Dumain reads it, the quantity would be false, though the ear might more easily excuse it. Such an omission would be not only possible, but sometimes very effective, in trisyllabic measures, as, for instance, in anapests like these, "'Tis the middle of night by the castle clock, And the owls have awakened the crowing cock,"
For several mornings in succession I was greeted on waking by the trisyllabic minor whistle of a chickadee, who piped again and again not far from my window. There could be little doubt about its being the bird that I knew to be excavating a building site in one of our apple-trees; but I was usually not out-of-doors until about five o'clock, by which time the music always came to an end.
Chinese may be said to consist of a vast number of monosyllables, each expressed by a different ideograph, each having a distinct significance, and each capable of combination and permutation with one or more of the others, by which combinations and permutations disyllabic and trisyllabic words are obtained representing every conceivable shade of meaning.
And he finally who, by means of the trisyllabic Pranava which denotes the highest Brahman, meditates on this very highest Brahman, is said to reach that Brahman, i. e. the supreme Person. The object of seeing is thus none other than the highest Self. Here terminates the adhikarana of the 'object of seeing.
And far away at the other end, startling in its suddenness and impetuosity, was a trisyllabic crow, so brief, piercing, and emphatic, that it could only have proceeded from that peppery uppish little bird, the bantam.
The barred face and long kingfisher-like beak give it a peculiarly knowing or cunning look, and the effect is heightened by the long trisyllabic call constantly uttered by the bird, from which it derives its name of Bien-te-veo, which means I-can-see-you. He is always letting you know that he is there, that he has got his eye on you, so that you had better be careful about your actions.
Except a few uncommonly superstitious people, who does not enjoy the whip-poor-will's trisyllabic exhortation, and the yak of the night-hawk? Bob White's weather predictions, also, have a wild charm all their own, albeit his persistent No more wet is often sadly out of accord with the farmer's hopes.
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