the hummingbird – or its predecessor – a terrifying monster defeats the expectations of the reader, who has been expecting a poem about the hummingbird we would recognise today. This use of hyperbole shows how things can change substantially with time.
Lawrence concludes the poem with a wry and alliterative comment: ‘We look at him through the wrong end of the long telescope of Time,/ Luckily for us.’ ‘The long telescope of time’ is a clever way of describing how we see the distant past. As Lawrence humorously puts it, we are very lucky to be able to admire tiny, cute, colourful hummingbirds, rather than their terrifying Paleolithic ancestors!
