Above our heads the sullen clouds
      Scud black and swift across the sky;
    Like silent ghosts in misty shrouds
      Stand out the white lighthouses high. 
    Almost as far as eye can reach,
      I see the close-reefed vessels fly,
    As fast we flit along the beach,—­
      One little sandpiper and I.

    I watch him as he skims along,
      Uttering his sweet and mournful cry. 
    He starts not at my fitful song,
      Or flash of fluttering drapery. 
    He has no thought of any wrong;
      He scans me with a fearless eye. 
    Staunch friends are we, well tried and strong,
      The little sandpiper and I.

    Comrade, where wilt thou be to-night,
      When the loosed storm breaks furiously? 
    My driftwood fire will burn so bright! 
      To what warm shelter canst thou fly? 
    I do not fear for thee, though wroth
      The tempest rushes through the sky: 
    For are we not God’s children both,
      Thou, little sandpiper, and I?

CELIA THAXTER.

* * * * *

THE BIRDS OF KILLINGWORTH.

The robin and the bluebird, piping loud,
Filled all the blossoming orchards with their glee;
The sparrows chirped as if they still were proud
Their race in Holy Writ should mentioned be;
And hungry crows, assembled in a crowd,
Clamored their piteous prayer incessantly,
Knowing who hears the ravens cry, and said: 
“Give us, O Lord, this day our daily bread!”

* * * * *

Thus came the jocund Spring in Killingworth,
In fabulous days, some hundred years ago;
And thrifty farmers, as they tilled the earth,
Heard with alarm the cawing of the crow,
That mingled with the universal mirth,
Cassandra-like, prognosticating woe;
They shook their heads, and doomed with dreadful words
To swift destruction the whole race of birds.

And a town-meeting was convened straightway
To set a price upon the guilty heads
Of these marauders, who, in lieu of pay,
Levied black-mail upon the garden beds
And cornfields, and beheld without dismay
The awful scarecrow, with his fluttering shreds;
The skeleton that waited at their feast,
Whereby their sinful pleasure was increased.

* * * * *

Rose the Preceptor,... 
To speak out what was in him, clear and strong.

* * * * *

“Plato, anticipating the Reviewers,
From his Republic banished without pity
The Poets; in this little town of yours,
You put to death, by means of a Committee,
The ballad-singers and the troubadours,
The street-musicians of the heavenly city,
The birds who make sweet music for us all
In our dark hours, as David did for Saul.

        THEIR SONGS.