120 What Birds Have Done With Me 



Italian woman and she had in captivity a wonder- 

 fully beautiful Cardinal, the one bird that carries 

 the colors of the University of Wisconsin through 

 all the Southland, and this splendid fellow had not 

 only been robbed of his birth-right of freedom, 

 but his eyes had been put out with a red-hot iron 

 that he might not be able to tell night from day 

 and would thus forever keep on calling for a dawn 

 whose approach he would never again behold. 

 Fight down your indignation and honest rage 

 against the perpetrator of the hideous outrage, 

 as I did mine, and get down on your knees and 

 thank Heaven that neither captivity nor blindness, 

 nor both together, can silence a singer that is a 

 member of God's orchestra. 



When life is in its fresh, glowing, splendid 

 morning, youth with its ardors and unvoiced long- 

 ings demands the new songs, but when experience 

 has steadied, possibly saddened, the heart de- 

 mands the heavenly manna of the old songs. 

 It's not so long ago that the realization came that 

 there are no new songs ; that a song, like a prov- 

 erb, to be truly great must have the approval of 

 unnumbered people through a long period of time. 

 Every time a national song is sung it becomes 

 greater, there adheres to it something of the sen- 

 timent, the emotions of the singer, so the solo 

 becomes equivalent to the mighty chorus. Call 

 this fancy if you please, but I never alone listen 



