BIRDS IN A VILLAGE 113 



And the tiny life, and the mad desire 



To be free, to be free, to be free t 

 Oh, the sky, the sky, the blue, wide sky, 



For the beat of a song-bird's wings ! 



Straight and close are the cramping bars 

 From the dawn of mist to the chill of stars, 



And yet it must sing or die ! 

 Will its marred harsh voice in the city street 



Make any heart of you glad < 

 It will only beat with its wings and beat, 



It will only sing you mad. 



If it does not go to your heart to see 

 The helpless pity of those bruised wings, 

 The tireless effort to which it clings 



To the strain and the will to be free, 

 I know not how I shall set in words 



The meaning of God in this, 



For the loveliest thing in this world of His 

 Are the ways and the songs of birds. 

 But the sky, the sky, the wide, free sky, 



For the home of the song-bird's heart ! 



How falsely does that man see nature, how grossly 

 ignorant must he be of its most elemental truths, 

 who looks upon it as a chamber of torture, a phy- 

 siological laboratory on a very vast scale, a scene 

 of endless strife and trepidation, of hunger and 

 cold, and every form of pain and misery and who, 

 holding this doctrine of Nature's cruelty, keeps a 



