A listening ear;
    No different voice, no new delays,
        If steps draw near. 
    “What bird is that?  Its song is good.” 
        And eager eyes
    Go peering through the dusky wood,
        In glad surprise. 
    Then late at night, when by his fire
        The traveller sits,
    Watching the flame grow brighter, higher,
        The sweet song flits
    By snatches through his weary brain
        To help him rest;
    When next he goes that road again
        An empty nest
    On leafless bough will make him sigh,
        “Ah me! last spring
    Just here I heard, in passing by,
        That rare bird sing!”

    But while he sighs, remembering
        How sweet the song,
    The little bird on tireless wing,
        Is borne along
    In other air; and other men
        With weary feet,
    On other roads, the simple strain
        Are finding sweet. 
    The birds must know.  Who wisely sings
        Will sing as they;
    The common air has generous wings,
        Songs make their way.

H. H.

* * * * *

THE BIRD KING.

    Dost thou the monarch eagle seek? 
      Thou’lt find him in the tempest’s maw,
    Where thunders with tornadoes speak,
      And forests fly as though of straw;
    Or on some lightning-splintered peak,
      Sceptred with desolation’s law,
    The shrubless mountain in his beak,
      The barren desert in his claw.

ALGER’S Oriental Poetry.

* * * * *

SHADOWS OF BIRDS.

    In darkened air, alone with pain,
    I lay.  Like links of heavy chain
    The minutes sounded, measuring day,
    And slipping lifelessly away. 
    Sudden across my silent room
    A shadow darker than its gloom
    Swept swift; a shadow slim and small,
    Which poised and darted on the wall,
    And vanished quickly as it came. 
    A shadow, yet it lit like flame;
    A shadow, yet I heard it sing,
    And heard the rustle of its wing,
    Till every pulse with joy was stirred;
    It was the shadow of a bird!

    Only the shadow!  Yet it made
    Full summer everywhere it strayed;
    And every bird I ever knew
    Back and forth in the summer flew,
    And breezes wafted over me
    The scent of every flower and tree;
    Till I forgot the pain and gloom
    And silence of my darkened room. 
    Now, in the glorious open air
    I watch the birds fly here and there;
    And wonder, as each swift wing cleaves
    The sky, if some poor soul that grieves
    In lonely, darkened, silent walls,
    Will catch the shadow as it falls!

H. H.

* * * * *

THE BIRD AND THE SHIP.