Page:The Seasons - Thomson (1791).djvu/85

To brook the harsh confinement of the cage.
Oft when, returning with her loaded bill,
Th' astonish'd mother finds a vacant nest,715
By the hard hand of unrelenting clowns
Robb'd, to the ground the vain provision falls;
Her pinions ruffle, and low-drooping scarce
Can bear the mourner to the poplar shade;
Where, all abandon'd to despair, she sings720
Her sorrows thro' the night; and on the bough
Sole-sitting, still at every dying fall
Takes up again her lamentable strain
Of winding woe; till wide around, the woods
Sigh to her song, and with her wail resound.725

But now the feather'd youth their former bounds,
Ardent, disdain; and, weighing oft their wings,
Demand the free possession of the sky;
This one glad office more, and then dissolves
Parental love at once, now needless grown.730
Unlavish Wisdom never works in vain.
'Tis on some evening, funny, grateful, mild,
When nought but balm is breathing thro' the woods,
With yellow lustre bright, that the new tribes
Visit the spacious heavens, and look abroad735
On Nature's common, far as they can see,
Or wing, their range, and pasture. O'er the boughs
Dancing about, still at the giddy verge
Their resolution fails; their pinions still,
In loose libration stretch'd, to trust the void740
Trembling refuse: till down before them fly
The parent-guides, and chide, exhort, command,
Or push them off. The surging air receives
Its plumy burden; and their self-taught wings
Winnow the waving element. On ground745