THE BLACKBIRD, 



" I could not think so plain a bird 

 Could sing so fine a song." 



One on another against the wall 



Pile up the books I am done with them all : 



I shall be wise, if I ever am wise, 



Out of my own ears, and of my own eyes. 



One day of the woods and their balmy light 

 One hour on the top of a breezy hill, 

 There in the sassafras all out of sight 

 The Blackbird is splitting his slender bill 

 For the ease of his heart : 



Do you think if he said 



"I will sing like this bird with the mud colored back 

 And the two little spots of gold over his eyes, 

 Or like to this shy little creature that flies 

 So low to the ground, with the amethyst rings 

 About her small throat all alive when she sings 

 With a glitter of shivering green for the rest, 

 Gray shading to gray, with the sheen of her breast 

 Half rose and half fawn 



Or like this one so proud, 

 That flutters so restless, and cries out so loud, 

 With stiff horny beak and a top-knotted head, 

 And a lining of scarlet laid under his wings " 

 Do you think, if he said, "I'm ashamed to be black! " 

 That he could have shaken the sassafras-tree 

 As he does with the song he was born to ? not he ! 



AUCE GARY. 



"Do you ne'er think what wondrous beings these? 



Do you ne'er think who made them who taught 

 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 ere caught ! 

 Whose habitation in the tree-tops even 



Are half-way houses on the road to heaven ! 

 **##*** 



' ' You call them thieves or pillagers ; but know, 



They are the winged wardens of your farms, 

 Who from the cornfields drive the insidious foe, 



And from your harvest 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." 



FROM "THE BIRDS OF KH.I.INGWORTH. " 



64 



