60 REDBREAST 



or that of any other bird, let me hope that you will 'steal 

 no more : ' 



'To the ground the vain provision falls! 



Her pinions ruffle, and, low drooping, scarce 



Can bear the mourner to the poplar shade, 



Where, all abandoned to despair, she sings 



Her sorrows through the night, and on the bough 



Sole sitting, still at every dying fall 



Takes up again her lamentable strain 



Of winding woe, till wide around the woods 



Sigh to her song, and with her wail resound.' 



" Here is no 'poetic license,' but if you think there is, 

 the following well-written ' plain prose ' of the amiable Mr. 

 Jesse will satisfy the possible doubt : 'I had an oppor- 

 tunity,' he writes in his ' Gleanings in Natural History,' 

 ' this summer of witnessing the distress of a Robin when, 

 on returning to her nest with food for her young, she 

 discovered that they had disappeared. Her low and 

 plaintive wailings were incessant. She appeared to seek 

 for them among the neighbouring bushes, now and then 

 changing her mournful cry into one which seemed like a 

 call to her brood to come to her. She kept the food in 

 her mouth for a short time, but when she found that her 

 cries were unanswerable, let it fall to the ground.' 



" So also Virgil, though speaking of a different species, 

 in his Fourth Georgic for Nature was the same eighteen 

 hundred years ago as she is now 



' Qualis populei maerens philomela sub umbra 

 Amissos queritur foetus, quos duros arator 

 Observans nido implumes detraxit : at ilia 

 Flet noctem, ramoque sedens, miserabile carmen 

 Integral, et maestis late loca qusestibus implet.' 



