Poor, little bird! the chase is ended;
No longer hast thou cause for fear;
Within these walls thou art befriended;
No sportsmen can molest thee here.

Without, they doubtless still await thee,
And scan with eager eyes the sky;
Sweet, winsome thing! how can they hate thee?
Why should they wish to see thee die?

So limp and helpless! wilt thou never
Recover from thy fear and flight?
How breathless was thy last endeavor
To reach this shelter, when in sight!

Thou tremblest still, as I approach thee;
Do I, too, seem like all the rest?
Thy timid, liquid eyes reproach me …
Alas! there's blood upon thy breast.

Nay, fear not, birdling! let me gently
Uplift and hold thee in my hand;
Thou gazest on me so intently,
Thou must my motive understand.

Thy downy breast is pierced and bleeding;
This wing will never rise again;
In vain thy look, so wild and pleading!
I cannot cure or ease thy pain.

Too well the hunters have succeeded;
Thy little life is ebbing fast;
My presence now is all unheeded;
'Tis over; … thou art dead at last.

Yet thus, within my garden dying,
Thy fate hath caused me less regret
Than that of all thy comrades, lying
Half dead and mangled in the net!

Where are they all, who crossed so gladly
The lofty Alps to seek the sun?
Still lives thy mate, to mourn thee sadly,
Or is her life-course also run?

Within the voiceless empyrean
No birds are passing on the breeze;
No songster lifts its joyous paean,
And silent stand my empty trees;

For at the base of every mountain,
Where southward-moving birds repose,
In every grove, at every fountain,
Lurk merciless, insatiate foes.

With cruel craft those foes surround them,
Ensnaring hundreds in a day,
Indifferent if they tear and wound them,
Proud only of the heaps they slay.

What care these brutes if songs of rapture
From thrush and lark are no more heard?
What matter if their modes of capture
Denude the land of every bird?

Whole regions, where they once abounded,
Are now as silent as the tomb;
The birds have vanished,—slain or wounded,
Pursued, by thousands, to their doom.

Meanwhile, since Earth itself is blighted,
The Nemesis of Nature wakes;
Her flawless balance must be righted;
If Ceres gives, … she also takes!

Still worse, a moral degradation
Thus cradled, vitiates the race;
Among the rising generation
A lust for slaughter grows apace.

Even children kill the birds thus captured,—
And, since none censures or withstands,
They seize the tiny skulls, enraptured
To crush them in their blood-smeared hands!

See yonder lad with tethered linnet,
Its frail legs raw from rasping strings!
A carriage comes,—he flings within it
The tortured bird … to sell its wings!

And oft as it may be rejected,
The little victim, mad with thirst,
Is jerked back, well-nigh vivisected,
Till pain and hunger do their worst.

Beware, harsh man and heartless woman!
Beneath you swells a threatening flood;
If you and yours remain inhuman,
It yet may drown you in your blood.

You smile, and call this sentimental;
You will not smile in later times!
For cruelty, so fundamental,
Already breeds the worst of crimes.