THE JAY 
Like so many beauties, we 
Feel the darts of enmity; 
Every sporting squire detests us. 
Every gamekeeper molests us : 
Hence our hope is far from strong 
For a life secure and long. 
What is strange, we do not know 
Why they should oppress us so. 
Even while they lightly own 
Birds more bright have never flown. — 
Soon you will not see a Jay, 
So our elder kindred say. 
Poor Mrs. Jay ! No matter how carefully she 
builds her nest, no matter how well she tends her 
young, in fact no matter what she does, she seems 
always to have a bad name. 
The gamekeeper calls her a “ pest,” and shoots 
her whenever he can. Sometimes in the wood- 
land, when sunbeams and shadows are dancing beneath 
the boughs, and a million tiny voices are whispering 
of life and joy, one may come upon a sad sight — 
the dead bodies of several Jays, nailed to a tree. 
They are put there as a warning to other birds, or 
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