Words cannot echo music’s winged note,
      One voice alone exhausts their utmost power;
    ’Tis that strange bird, whose many-voiced throat
      Mocks all his brethren of the woodlawn bower,
    To whom, indeed, the gift of tongues is given,
      The musical, rich tongues that fill the grove;
    Now, like the lark, dropping his notes from heaven,
      Now cooing the soft notes of the dove.

    Oft have I seen him, scorning all control,
      Winging his arrowy flight, rapid and strong,
    As if in search of his evanished soul,
      Lost in the gushing ecstasy of song;
    And as I wandered on and upward gazed,
      Half lost in admiration, half in fear,
    I left the brothers wondering and amazed,
      Thinking that all the choir of heaven was near.

DENIS FLORENCE MACCARTHY.

* * * * *

FLIGHT OF THE BIRDS.

    Meanwhile the tepid caves, and fens, and shores,
    Their brood as numerous hatch from the egg that soon
    Bursting with kindly rupture, forth disclosed
    Their callow young; but feathered soon and fledge
    They summed their pens; and, soaring the air sublime,
    With clang despised the ground, under a cloud
    In prospect:  there the eagle and the stork
    On cliffs and cedar-tops their eyries build;
    Part loosely wing the region; part, more wise,
    In common ranged in figure, wedge their way,
    Intelligent of seasons, and set forth
    Their aery caravan, high over seas
    Flying, and over lands, with mutual wing
    Easing their flight; so steers the prudent crane
    Her annual voyage, borne on winds; the air
    Floats as they pass, fanned with unnumbered plumes: 
    From branch to branch the smaller birds with song
    Solaced the woods, and spread their painted wings
    Till even; nor then the solemn nightingale
    Ceased warbling, but all night tuned her soft lays: 
    Others, on silver lakes and rivers, bathed
    Their downy breasts; the swan with arched neck
    Between her white wings, mantling proudly, rows
    Her state with oary feet; yet oft they quit
    The dank, and, rising on stiff pennons, tower
    The mid aerial sky:  others on ground
    Walked firm; the crested cock, whose clarion sounds
    The silent hours; and the other, whose gay train
    Adorns him, colored with the florid hue
    Of rainbows and starry eyes.

MILTON:  Paradise Lost, book 7.

* * * * *

A CHILD’S WISH.

    I would I were a note
    From a sweet bird’s throat! 
    I’d float on forever,
    And melt away never! 
    I would I were a note
    From a sweet bird’s throat!

    But I am what I am! 
    As content as a lamb. 
    No new state I’ll covet;
    For how long should I love it? 
    No, I’ll be what I am,—­
    As content as a lamb!