Page:Scenes in my Native Land.pdf/313

Feeling so very sure 't would do you good.
But as for me, I had a thousand fears
Of cholera, and. all the latent ills
That birds are heir to, and with fainter step
Stole every morning to your curtained couch,
Filled with sad visions of your early death.
But lo! you grew like mushrooms, and your sires,
Who screamed at first with terror, when we drew
So near their hopeful race, at length became
Quite passive to our visits, and partook
Our scattered crumbs complacently.
                                                      Yet now,
You 're gone, my birds, and I shall miss you much,
Both morn and eve.
                             Methinks you were too young
To try your fortune in this world of snares,
And much I fear that some marauding cat,
With her keen feline tastes in exercise,
May seize and bear you, with your tender wings
All helpless, hanging from her whisker'd mouth,
A gift to her voracious little ones.
Yet hence with such forebodings,—and I 'll think
When from yon shrubbery I hear a song,
Trembling with sweet, unpractised melody,
It is your descant.
                            How will ye obtain
Your sustenance, thus sent as wanderers forth,
Mid all the ignorance of infancy
To cater for yourselves?
                                    Yet this wide earth