They might have saved themselves and have abandoned the little ones to their fate, as human creatures often do under similar circumstances.  But they stayed upon their nests, gathered their little ones about them, covered them with their wings, as if to retard, as long as possible, the fatal moment, and so awaited death, in that loving and noble attitude.

And who shall say if, in the horrible dismay and flight from the flames, that example of self-sacrifice, that voluntary maternal martyrdom, may not have given strength and courage to some weak soul who was about to abandon those who had need of him.

DE AMICIS’ Holland.

* * * * *

THE PHEASANT.

    See! from the brake the whirring pheasant springs
    And mounts exulting on triumphant wings. 
    Short is his joy; he feels the fiery wound,
    Flutters in blood, and panting beats the ground. 
    Ah! what avail his glossy, varying dyes,
    His purple crest, and scarlet-circled eyes,
    The vivid green his shining plumes unfold,
    His painted wings, and breast that flames with gold!

POPE.

* * * * *

THE HERONS OF ELMWOOD.

    Silent are all the sounds of day;
      Nothing I hear but the chirp of crickets,
    And the cry of the herons winging their way
      O’er the poet’s house in the Elmwood thickets.

    Call to him, herons, as slowly you pass
      To your roosts in the haunts of the exiled thrushes,
    Sing him the song of the green morass,
      And the tides that water the reeds and rushes.

    Sing him the mystical song of the Hern,
      And the secret that baffles our utmost seeking;
    For only a sound of lament we discern,
      And cannot interpret the words you are speaking.

    Sing of the air, and the wild delight
      Of wings that uplift and winds that uphold you,
    The joy of freedom, the rapture of flight
      Through the drift of the floating mists that enfold you;

    Of the landscape lying so far below,
      With its towns and rivers and desert places;
    And the splendor of light above, and the glow
      Of the limitless, blue, ethereal spaces.

    Ask him if songs of the Troubadours,
      Or of Minnesingers in old black-letter,
    Sound in his ears more sweet than yours,
      And if yours are not sweeter and wilder and better.

H. W. LONGFELLOW.

* * * * *

WALTER VON DER VOGELWEID.

    Vogelweid the Minnesinger,
      When he left this world of ours,
    Laid his body in the cloister,
      Under Wuertzburg’s minster towers.

    And he gave the monks his treasures,
      Gave them all with this behest: 
    They should feed the birds at noontide
      Daily on his place of rest;