PART THREE BIRDS 



Do you ne'er think what wondrous beings these? 



Do you ne'er think who made them, and 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 e'er caught ! 

 Whose habitations in the tree-tops even 

 Are halfway houses on the road to heaven ! 



Think of your woods and orchards without birds ! . . . 



They are the winged wardens of your farms, 

 Who from the cornfields drive the insidious foe, 



And from your harvests keep a hundred harms. 



LONGFELLOW, The Birds of Killingworth 



