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THE DEAD ROBIN.
"It is dead—it is dead—it will wake no more
With the earliest light, as it wak'd before—
And singing, as if it were glad to wake,
And wanted our longer sleep to break;
We found it a little unfledg'd thing,
With no plume to smooth and no voice to sing;
The father and mother both were gone,
And the callow nurseling left alone.
"For a wind, as fierce as those from the sea,
Had broken the boughs of the apple tree;
The scattered leaves lay thick on the ground,
And among them the nest and the bird we found.
We warm'd it, and fed it, and made it a nest
Of Indian cotton, and watch'd its rest;
Its feathers grew soft, and its wings grew strong,
And happy it seemed as the day was long.
"Do you remember its large dark eye,
How it brightened, when one of us came nigh?
How it would stretch its throat and sing,
And beat the osier cage with its wing,
Till we let it forth, and it perched on our hand—
It needed not hood, nor silken band,
Like the falcons we read of, in days gone by,
Linked to the wrist lest away they should fly.
