138 BIRDS IN TOWN AND VILLAGE 



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 1" 



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 physiological 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 



