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Poems (Gould, 1833)/The Wounded Bird

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For works with similar titles, see The Wounded Bird.
4694037Poems — The Wounded BirdHannah Flagg Gould
THE WOUNDED BIRD.
Here's the last food your poor mother can bring!Take it, my suffering brood!Oh! they have stricken me under the wing;See, it is dripping with blood!
Fair was the morn, and I wished them to riseAnd taste of its beauties with me;The air was all fragrance, all splendor the skies;And bright shone the earth and the sea.
Little I thought, when so freely I went,Spending my earliest breathTo wake them with song, it could be their intentTo pay me with arrows and death!
Fear that my nestlings would feel them forgotHelped me, a moment, to fly;Else, I had given up life on the spot,Under my murderer's eye.
Feeble and faint, I have reached you, at length,Over the hill and the plain,Strewing my feathers, and losing my strength,Wounded and throbbing with pain!
Yet,I can never brood o'er you again,Closing you under my breast!Its coldness would chill you; my blood would but stainAnd spoil the warm down in your nest.
Ere the night-coming, your mother will lieMotionless, under the tree—Helpless and silent, I still shall be nigh,While ye are moaning for me!