

You call them thieves and pillagers; but know 

 They are the winged wardens of your farms, 

 Who from the cornfields drive the insidious foe, 

 And from your harvests keep a hundred harms; 

 Even the blackest of them all, the crow, 

 Renders good service as your man at arms, 

 Crushing the beetle in his coat of mail, 

 And crying havoc on the slug and snail. 



Longfellow, Birds of Killing worth. 



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