170 What Birds Have Done With Me 



That made the wild Ass pause in her race 

 And the frog drop down at his feet. 



The old bear paused as he hunted the bee, 

 A snake slipped under a spray 

 And a rooster stood with the down on his beak 

 And stared with his foot on the prey. 



The Moo-cow said, "I've lowed many a song 

 But never a one so gay 

 For he sings of what the world will be 

 When the years have died away." 



There is still worse caricature than this, the 

 worst imaginable ; instead of the music of the wild 

 the choir made invisible by the boughs of a ven- 

 erable brotherhood of trees, you send skulking 

 through these dream haunted shades, the man 

 with a gun, the mean brother of a wolf who being 

 able to comprehend beauty, destroys it; able to 

 comprehend music, seeks to silence it forever 

 let us pillory forever that libel on God's crea- 

 tures. 



Let me whisper it ; the people on the Street are 

 ignorant, deeply, darkly, densely ignorant. 

 They don't know the first thing of the laws that 

 govern the world in which they live and move 

 and have their being. To them the house of life 

 has not only had the shades down and the blinds 

 closed, but it has been barred and double pad- 



