54
THE TRUANT DOVE.
This saying heard,
From certain new acquaintance he had found,
Who at their perfect ease,
Amid a field of peas
Boasted to him, that all the country round,
The wheat, and oats, and barley, rye and tares,
Quite to the neighbouring sea, were theirs;
And theirs the oak, and beech-woods, far and near,
For their right noble owner was a peer,
And they themselves, luxuriantly were stored
In a great dove-cote—to amuse my lord!
"Toujours perdrix ne valent rien." That's strange!
When people once are happy, wherefore change?
So thought our stock-dove, but communication,
With birds in his new friend's exalted station,
Whose means of information,
