" * * * * * * The throng
That dwell in nests, and have the gift of song.
" You slay them all! and wherefore? for the gain
Of a scant handful more or less of wheat,
Or rye, or barley, or some other grain,
Scratched up at random by industrious feet,
Searching for worm or weevil after rain !
Or a few cherries, that are not so sweet
As are the songs these uninvited guests
Sing at their feast with comfortable breasts.
" Do you ne'er think what wondrous beings these ?
Do you ne'er think who made them, and who taught
The dialect they speak, where melodies
Alone are the interpreters of thought ?
Whose household words are songs in many keys,
Sweeter than instrument of man e'er caught!
Whose habitations on the tree-tops even
Are half-way houses on the road to heaven !
" Think, every morning when the sun peeps through
The dim, leaf-latticed windows of the grove
How jubilant the happy birds renew
Their old melodious madrigals of love !
And when you think of this, remember too
'Tis always morning somewhere, and above
The awakening continents, from shore to shore,
Somewhere the birds are singing evermore.
*********
" You call them thieves and pillagers ; but know
They are the winged wardens of your farms,
Who from the corn-fields drive the insidious foe,
And from your harvests keep a hundred harms ;
Even the blackest of them all, the crow,
Benders good service as your man-at-arms,
Crushing the beetle in his coat of mail,
And crying havoc on the slug and snail."
Longfellow.