THE BIRDS OF KILLINGWORTH 157 



The dialect they speak, where melodies 

 Alone are the interpreters of thought ? 



Whose household words are songs in many keys, 

 Sweeter than instrument of man e'er caught ! 



Whose habitations in the tree-tops even 



Are half-way houses on the road to heaven ! 



Think, every morning when the sun peeps through 

 The dim, leaf-latticed windows of the grove, 



How jubilant the happy biixls renew 

 Their old, melodious madrigals of love ! 



And when you think of this, remember, too, 

 'Tis always morning somewhere, and above 



The awakening continents, from shore to shore, 



Somewhere the birds are singing evermore. 



Think of your woods and orchards without birds } 

 Of empty nests that cling to boughs and beams, 



As in an idiot's brain remembered words 



Hang empty 'mid the cobwebs of his dreams ! 



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 ? 



You call them thieves and pillagers ; but know 

 They are the winged wardens of your farms, 



Who from the cornfields 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. 



HENRY WADSWOBTH LONGFELLOW. 



