BIRDS AND POETRY. 
439 
when lie will leave you the root. Pick it up without 
fear, for it comes from the Lord, in whose hand is peace, 
and it is free from enchantment: then go and heal thy 
sick patients; they will all recover. Thus is the will of 
the All-merciful.” 
I consider it unnecessary to quote any further anecdotes 
on the subject of the poetry of flight. Those who have 
travelled much, and especially those who have visited the 
South, can speak from experience of the impression made 
on them by meeting with the birds of their native home 
on their annual trip to foreign lands. We greet them 
as old friends, companions of our childhood, messengers 
from home. They call forth in the breast, even of the 
most hardened, a feeling of longing, not unmingled, 
however, with envy, for they can do as they please, and 
return in a short time from whence they came, though 
the journey be so long. In a few days the godlike gift of 
flight carries them back to where they were born; we, 
however, with all our schemes, inventions, and exercise 
of our splendid powers of intellect, cannot attain to the 
gift they have received from nature, however much we 
may yearn after it. 
It is not their powers of flight alone which seem, in 
our eyes, worthy of envy; for not a few birds are as 
much at home in the water as in the air. Whoever has 
watched the doings of the Dipper by the banks of a 
bubbling trout-stream, has, we feel sure, felt in his 
inmost heart a secret spice of envy: for the spectator 
must have noticed how the bonny bird loves to disport 
itself where the water foams and swirls, and the fall 
thunders over the boulders. In such a place the 
Dipper may be seen sitting for minutes together on a 
slippery mossy stone: suddenly it sees something, and 
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