No beauteous flower adorns my humble head,
No spicy odors on the air I shed;
But here I’m stationed, in my sombre suit,
With only top and stem—­I’ve scarce a root!

Untaught of my beginning or my end,
I know not whence I sprung, or where I tend: 
Yet I will wait, and trust; nor dare presume
To question Justice—­I, a frail Mushroom!

=The Lost Nestlings.=

“Have you seen my darling nestlings?”
A mother-robin cried,
“I cannot, cannot find them,
Though I’ve sought them far and wide.

“I left them well this morning,
When I went to seek their food;
But I found, upon returning,
I’d a nest without a brood.

“O have you nought to tell me,
That will ease my aching breast,
About my tender offspring
That I left within the nest?

“I have called them in the bushes,
  And the rolling stream beside;
Yet they come not at my bidding;—­
  I’m afraid they all have died!”

“I can tell you all about them;”
  Said a little wanton boy
“For ’twas I that had the pleasure
  Your nestlings to destroy.

“But I didn’t think their mother
  Her little ones would miss;
Or ever come to hail me
  With a wailing sound, like this.

“I didn’t know your bosom
  Was formed to suffer woe,
And to mourn your murdered children,
  Or I had not grieved you so.

“I am sorry that I’ve taken
  The lives I can’t restore;
And this regret shall teach me
  To do the like no more.

“I ever shall remember
The wailing sound I’ve heard! 
No more I’ll kill a nestling,
To pain a mother-bird!”

=The Bat’s Flight By Daylight An Allegory=.

A Bat one morn from his covert flew,
To show the world what a Bat could do,
By soaring off on a lofty flight,
In the open day, by the sun’s clear light! 
He quite forgot that he had for wings
But a pair of monstrous, plumeless things;
That, more than half like a fish’s fin,
With a warp of bone, and a woof of skin,
Were only fit in the dark to fly,
In view of a bat’s or an owlet’s eye.

He sallied forth from his hidden hole,
And passed the door of his neighbor, Mole,
Who shrugged, and said, “Of the two so blind
The wisest, surely, stays behind!”
But he could not cope with the glare of day: 
He lost his sight, and he missed his way;—­
He wheeled on his flapping wings, till, “bump!”
His head went, hard on the farm-yard pump. 
Then, stunned and posed, as he met the ground,
A stir and a shout in the yard went round;
For its tenants thought they had one come there,
That seemed not of water, earth, or air. 
The Hen, “Cut, cut, cut-dah-cut!” cried,
For all to cut at the thing she spied;
While the taunting Duck said, “Quack, quack, quack!”
As her muddy mouth to the pool went back,
For something denser than sound, to show