The Stricken 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 rise,

Enjoying its beauties with me.

The air was all fragrance—all splendor the skies,

While bright shone the earth and the sea.

Little I thought, when so freely I went,

Employing my earliest breath,

To wake them with song, it could be their intent

To pay me with arrows and death!

Fear that my nestlings would feel them forgot,

Helped me a moment to fly;

Else I had given up life on the spot,

Under my murderer’s eye.

Yet, I can never brood o’er you again,

Closing you under my breast!

Its coldness would chill you; my blood would but stain

And spoil the warm down of your nest.

Ere the night-coming, your mother will lie,

All motionless, under the tree;

Where, deafened, and silent, I still shall be nigh,

While you will be moaning for me!