Sighs responsive to each gale;
  Its chords are strung ’mid branching trees,
  And echo to ev’ry passing breeze;
  Gently they vibrate through the grove,
  Touching the chords of life and love,
  Mixed with the sounds that round me float. 
  I hear, sweet bird, thy mellow note;
  For as in sunshine, as in rain,
  Thou comest to cheer me with thy strain. 
  Few friends so kind to come each day,
  To sing the tedious hours away.

  But pleasant visions vanish soon,
  And the bright sun grows dim at noon. 
  The pleasant gales forget to play,
  And dark and fearful grows the day. 
  The waving island takes its flight,
  Far from the stretch of human sight;
  High in ’mid air it seems to rise,
  Dissolving, mixing with the skies. 
  But ah, it leaves no vacant place,
  For grisly phantoms take its place. 
  Thus ever varying all things seem
  “Fickle as a changeful dream;”
  And naught is left of that gay train,
  My gentle bird, but thy sweet strain. 
  O who can tell in hours of ease,
  Of fancies wild, and strange as these? 
  When health gushes through each vein,
  Who paint the fever of the brain? 
  Who picture half the grief and pain
  That follows pale sickness in her train? 
  With bitterest dregs she fills her cup,
  And makes her victims drink them up: 
  Binds them to thorny pillows down,
  And frightens sleep with her stern frown;
  Or if perchance the eyelids close,
  She gives her victim no repose,
  But hurries round and madly screams,
  And conjures up her wildest dreams,
  Binds reason in her iron chains,
  To fancy gives her longest reins,
  And whips and spurs it, through the brain,
  Till startling nature wakes again. 
  She flings the rose from beauty’s cheek,
  And on it paints her hectic streak;
  Takes rosy childhood from his play,
  And gives grim death the beauteous prey;
  For ever round her footsteps steal
  To pick for him his glutton meal;
  And still she keeps her promise good.

  To pamper him with hourly food;
  But yet they stand there, side by side,
  Death and the grave, unsatisfied. 
  For should a million hourly die,
  Twould not their appetites supply. 
  But what seem curses to our eyes
  Are nought but blessings in disguise;
  And sickness is in mercy given
  To wean the soul from earth to heaven;
  For were all bright and joyous here. 
  Who would think on yon, bright sphere? 
  But pleasure pinioned to this sod,
  Our thoughts would never rise to God. 
  And death’s the passage to the skies,
  Through which our ransom’d souls must rise,
  To yonder blissful, bright abode,
  Where dwells our Father and our God. 
  But now, sweet bird, I miss thy tone,
  And feel at least one pleasure gone;
  A prowling cat, foe to thy kind,