Our Native Songsters

Front Cover
Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1852 - Birds - 350 pages

From inside the book

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 319 - Yea, the stork in the heaven knoweth her appointed times ; and the turtle, and the crane, and the swallow, observe the time of their coming; but my people know not the judgment of the LORD.
Page 128 - Tis the merry Nightingale That crowds, and hurries, and precipitates With fast thick warble his delicious notes; As he were fearful that an April night Would be too short for him to utter forth His love-chant, and disburthen his full soul Of all its music...
Page 182 - Wisely regardful of the embroiling sky, In joyless fields and thorny thickets leaves His shivering mates, and pays to trusted man His annual visit. Half afraid, he first Against the window beats; then brisk alights On the warm hearth; then hopping o'er the floor, Eyes all the smiling family askance, And pecks, and starts, and wonders where he is Till, more familiar grown, the table-crumbs Attract his slender feet.
Page 94 - Tis gone! (so seemed it) and we grieved Indignant at the wrong. Just three days after, passing by In clearer light the moss-built cell I saw, espied its shaded mouth; And felt that all was well. The Primrose for a veil had spread The largest of her upright leaves; And thus, for purposes benign, A simple flower deceives.
Page 128 - But never elsewhere in one place I knew So many nightingales ; and far and near, In wood and thicket, over the wide grove, They answer and provoke each other's song, With skirmish and capricious passagings, And murmurs musical and swift jug jug, And one low piping sound more sweet than all ; Stirring the air with such a harmony, That should you close your eyes, you might almost Forget it was not day...
Page 127 - Or slow distemper, or neglected love, (And so, poor wretch! fill'd all things with himself, And made all gentle sounds tell back the tale Of his own sorrow) he, and such as he, First named these notes a melancholy strain. And many a poet echoes the conceit; Poet who hath been building up the rhyme When he had better far have...
Page 184 - Call for the robin-red-breast and the wren, Since o'er shady groves they hover, And with leaves and flowers do cover The friendless bodies of unburied men. Call unto his funeral dole The ant, the field-mouse, and the mole To rear him hillocks that shall keep him warm And (when gay tombs are robbed) sustain no harm, But keep the wolf far thence that's foe to men, For with his nails he'll dig them up again.
Page 262 - One appeared dead, and was held up by the tail or claw without exhibiting any signs of life ; a second stood on its head with its claws in the air ; a third imitated a Dutch milk-maid going to market, with pails on its shoulders ; a fourth mimicked a Venetian girl looking out at a window ; a fifth appeared as a soldier, and mounted guard as a sentinel...
Page 80 - And seldom needs a laboured roof ; Yet is it to the fiercest sun Impervious, and storm-proof. So warm, so beautiful withal, In perfect fitness for its aim, That to the Kind, by special grace, Their instinct surely came.

Bibliographic information