A Dish of Robins 103 



ever been built there, though an empty dish, cov- 

 ered by dust, like the little toy soldier, is still 

 "waiting the long years through." Till death over- 

 took them, they came unto their own, and their 

 own received them with hearts full of affection. 

 I never see a Robin, cheerful and active as he 

 always is, without a feeling that I am confronting 

 an object that stands for much that is best in life. 

 To me, he is eternal hope, dressed in working 

 clothes. The poet Campbell dressed up hope so 

 gorgeously that he makes you feel like Moses in 

 the presence of the burning bush : 



Eternal HOPE ! when yonder spheres sublime 

 Peal'd their first notes to sound the march of 



Time, 



Thy joyous youth began but not to fade 

 When all the sister planets have decay'd; 

 When, wrapt in fire, the realms of ether glow, 

 And Heaven's last thunder shakes the world 



below, 



Thou, undismay'd shalt o'er the ruins smile 

 And light thy torch at Nature's funeral pile. 



Against these lurid surroundings of eternal hope 

 in the last rays of a burning sunset, I have a 

 memory picture of a living incarnate eternal hope 

 in the cool dawn, after a night of tempest, and 

 this living hope is only a Robin redbreast. A 

 tornado, in the blackness of darkness, wrecked a 



