president's address. 
145 
The blue-bird balanced on some topmost spray, 
Flooding with melody the neighborhood; 
Linnet and meadow-lark, and all the throng 
That dwell in nests, and have the gift of song. 
“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 comfort'able breasts. 
“Do you ne’er think what wondrous beings these? 
Do you ne’er think who made them, and who taught 
The dialect they speak, where melodies 
Alone are the interpreters of thought? 
Whose household words are songs in many keys, 
Sweeter than instrument of man e’er caught ! 
Whose habitations in the tree-tops even 
Are half-way houses on the road to heaven ! 
“ 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! 
OI 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 
The feathered gleaners follow to your door? 
“You call ihem thieves and pillagers; but know 
They are the winged wardens of vour farms, 
Who from the corn fields drive the insidious foe, 
And from your harvest 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 snad. 
“ 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 vour speech, 
You contradict the very things I teach?” 
