THE TRUANT DOVE.
57
Yet rush with open eyes to their undoing;
Thus felt the dove; but in the cant of fashion
He talk'd of fate, and of predestination,
And in a grave oration,
He to his much affrighted mate related,
How he, yet slumbering in the egg, was fated,
To gather knowledge, to instruct his kind,
By observation elevate his mind,
And give new impulse to Columbian life;
"If it be so," exclaim'd his hapless wife,
"It is my fate, to pass my days in pain,
"To mourn your love estrang'd, and mourn in vain;
"Here in our once dear hut, to wake and weep,
"When thy unkindness shall have 'murder'd sleep;'
"And never that dear hut shall I prepare,
"And wait with fondness your arrival there,
