122 OUR IRISH SONG BIRDS. 



diggers, and all of them far from home. They came 

 this Sabbath day to listen, not to a preacher's voice, but 

 to the well-remembered song of an English Skylark. 

 As he hung in a large cage outside the door, like most 

 singers, he kept them waiting a bit ; but at last, just at 

 noon, when the mistress of the house had warranted him 

 to sing, the little feathered exile began, as it were, to 

 tune his pipes. The savage men gathered round the 

 cage that moment, and soon the same sun that had 

 warmed his little heart at home came glaring down on 

 him here, and he gave back music for it, more and more, 

 till at last, amidst breathless silence and glistening eyes 

 of the rough diggers, hanging on his voice, outburst, in 

 that distant land, his English song. It swelled his little 

 throat, and gushed from him with thrilling force and 

 plenty, and every time he checked it to think of its 

 theme, the green meadows, the quiet stealing streams, 

 the clover he first soared from, and the spring he sang 

 so well, a loud sigh from many a rough bosom, many a 

 wild and wicked heart, told how tight the listeners had 

 held their breath to hear ; and many a time, too, the 

 rugged mouths opened, and so stayed, and the shaggy 

 lips trembled, and more than one drop trickled from 

 fierce, unbridled hearts, down bronzed and rugged 

 cheeks. Dulce domum! And these rude men, full of 

 oaths, and strife and cupidity, had once been English 

 boys, and strolled about the fields with little sisters and 

 brothers, and heard this very song. The little play- 

 mates lay in the churchyard ; and they were changed, 

 oh, how sadly! but there was no change in this immortal 

 song. And so for a moment years of vice rolled away 

 like a dark cloud, and the past shone out in the song- 



