PASSER DOMESTICUS. 399 



Will bleat of flocks or bellowing of herds 



Make up for the lost music, when your teams 

 Drag home the stingy harvest, and no more 

 The feathered gleaners follow to your door? 



What ! would you rather see the incessant stir 



Of insects in the windrows of the hay, 

 And hear the locust and the grasshopper 



Their melancholy hurdy-gurdies play ? 

 Is this more pleasant to you than the whirr 



Of meadow-lark and its sweet roundelay ? 

 Or twitter of little fieldfares, as you take 

 Your nooning in the shade of bush and brake? 



You call them theives and pillagers ; but know 



They are the winged wardens of your farms, 

 Who from the corn-fields drive the insidious foe, 



And from your harvests keep a hundred harms ; 

 Even the blackest of them all, the crow, 



Renders good service as your man-at-arms, 

 Crushing the beetle in his coat of mail, 

 And crying havoc on the slug and snail. 



JBut still the dreadf ul massacre began — 

 O'er fields and orchards and o'er woodland crests 



The ceaseless fusilade of terror ran : 



Dead fell the birds, with blood stains on their breasts, 



Or wounded, crept away from sight of man, 

 While the young died of famine in their nests ; 



A slaughter to be told in groans, not words, 



The very St Bartholomew of Birds ! 



Devoured by worms, like Herod, was the town 



Because, like Herod, it had ruthlessly 

 Slaughtered the Innocents. From the trees spun down 



The canker-worms upon the passers-by, 

 Upon each woman's bonnet, shawl, and gown, 



Who shook them off with just a little cry ; 

 They were the terror of each favourite walk, 

 The endless theme of all the village talk. 



The farmers grew impatient, but a few 



Confessed their error, and would not complain. 



That year in Killingworth the autumn came 

 Without the light of his majestic look. 



A few lost leaves blushed crimson with their shame, 

 And drowned themselves despairing in the brook, 



While the wild wind went moaning everywhere, 



Lamenting the dead children of the air !" 



The result was — the same authorities which ordered the death 

 of the birds had to order other birds back to replace them. 



