Mlea of the Birds. 
From “The Birds of Killingworth.” 
LATO, anticipating the reviewers, 
R 
From his republic banished without pity 
The poets: in this little town of yours, 
You put to death, by means of a committee, 
The ballad singers and the troubadours, 
The street musicians of the heavenly city, 
The birds, who make sweet music for us all 
In our dark hours, as David did for Saul. 
The Thrush, that carols at the dawn of day 
From the green steeples of the piny wood; 
The Oriole in the elm; the noisy Jay, 
Jargoning like a foreigner at his food; 
The Bluebird balanced on some topmost spray, 
Flooding with melody the neighborhood ; 
Linnet and Meadow Lark, and all the throng, 
Think every morning when the sun peeps through 
The dim, leaf-latticed windows of the grove, 
How jubilant the happy birds renew 
Their old melodious madrigals of love! 
And when you think of this, remember, too, 
’Tis always morning somewhere, and above 
The awakening continents, from shore to shore, 
Somewhere the birds are singing evermore. - 
Think of your woods and orchards without birds! 
Of empty nests that cling to boughs and beams, 
As in an idiot’s brain remembered words 
Hang empty mid the cobwebs of his dreams! 
Will bleat of flocks or bellowing of herds 
Make up for the lost music, when your teams 
Drag home the stingy harvest, and no more 
That dwell in nests, and have the gift of song,— The feathered gleaners follow to your door? 
What! would you rather see the incessant stir 
Of insects in the windrows of the hay, 
And hear the locust and the grasshopper 
Their melancholy hurdy-gurdies play? 
Is this more pleasant to you than the whirr 
Of Meadow Lark, and its sweet roundelay, 
Or twitter of little Fieldfares, as you take 
Your nooning in the shade of bush and brake? 
You slay them all! and wherefore? For the gain 
Of a scant handful more or less of wheat, 
Or rye, or barley, or some other grain, 
Scratched up at random by industrious feet 
Searching for worm or weevil after rain; 
Or a few cherries, that are not so sweet 
As are the songs these uninvited guests 
Sing at their feast with comfortable breasts. 
You call them thieves and pillagers; but know 
They are the winged wardens of your farms, 
who taught Who from the corn-fields drive the insidious foe, 
The dialect they speak, where melodies And from your harvests keep a hundred 
Alone are the interpreters of thought? harms; 
Whose household words are songs in many keys, Even the blackest of them all, the Crow, 
Sweeter than instrument of man e’er caught! Renders good service as your man-at-arms, 
Whose habitations in the tree-tops even Crushing the beetle in his coat of mail, 
Are half-way, houses on the road to, heaven! And crying havoc on the slug and snail. 
Do you ne’er think what wondrous beings these? 
Do you ne’er think who made them, and 
How can I teach your children gentleness, 
And mercy to the weak, and reverence 
For Life, which, in its weakness or excess, 
Is still a gleam of God’s omnipotence, 
= Or Death, which, seeming darkness, is no less 
The selfsame light, although averted hence, 
When by your laws, your actions, and your speech, 
You contradict the very things I teach? 
H. W. LoNcGrettow. 
