you a short poem now being painted on zinc by a lady, to put up on a wall of a tiny little garden in a court in Whitechapel which is under my care.
SONG OF THE CITY SPARROW.
When the summer-time is ended
And the winter days are near;
When the bloom hath all departed
With the childhood of the year;
When the martins and the swallows
Flutter cowardly away,
Then the people can remember
That the sparrows always stay.
That although we're plain and songless,
And poor city birds are we,
Yet before the days of darkness
We, the sparrows, never flee.
But we hover round the window,
And we peck against the pane,
While we twitteringly tell them
That the spring will come again.
And when drizzly dull November
Falls so gloomily o'er all,
And the misty fog enshrouds them
In a dim and dreary pall;
