Aid the full concert; while the stock-dove breathes A melancholy murmur through the whole.

'T is love creates their melody, and all This waste of music is the voice of love; That even to birds and beasts the tender arts Of pleasing teaches.

JAMES THOMSON.

BIRD RAPTURES.

THE sunrise wakes the lark to sing,
The moonrise wakes the nightingale:
Come darkness, moonrise, everything,
That is so silent, sweet, and pale,
Come, so ye wake the nightingale.

Make haste to mount, thou wistful moon,
Make haste to wake the nightingale,

Let silence set the world in tune,

To hearken to that wordless tale
Which warbles from the nightingale.

O herald skylark, stay thy flight

One moment, for a nightingale
Floods us with sorrow and delight.
To-morrow thou shall hoist the sail;
Leave us to-night the nightingale.

CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI.

THE MIGRATION OF BIRDS.

Where the Northern Ocean in vast whirls
Boils round the naked melancholy isles

Of furthest Thule, and the Atlantic surge
Pours in among the stormy Hebrides,

Who can recount what transmigrations there
Are annual made? What nations come and go?
And how the living clouds on clouds arise?
Infinite wings! till all the plume dark air,
And rude resounding shore are one wild cry.

Fugitive Poetry.

BLESSED CREATURES.

FROM ODE ON IMMORTALITY.

Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song,
And while the young lambs bound

As to the tabor's sound,

To me alone there came a thought of grief:
A timely utterance gave that thought relief,
And I again am strong.

The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep;
No more shall grief of mine the season wrong;
I hear the echoes through the mountains throng;
The winds come to me from the fields of sleep,
And all the earth is gay;
Land and sea

Give themselves up to jollity,

And with the heart of May

Doth every beast keep holiday.
Thou child of joy,

Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy shepherd-boy!

Ye blessed creatures, I have heard the call
Ye to each other make; I see

The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee ;
My heart is at your festival,

My head hath its coronal,

The fulness of your bliss, I feel I feel it all. WORDSWORTH.

THE BIRDS OF MONKSTOWN CASTLE.

FOR when, like one that's slept too long,
The sudden sun before me springs,

Ivy and stone break into song,

And hall and battlement take wings!

The lords of earth lie still down there;
They have their night who had their day

See, in their place the lords of air

Make merry with their honors gray.

From mullioned windows they peep out,
In families, or in lover pairs;

On the high walls they walk about

And chatter of their sweet affairs.

MRS. PIATT.

THE OWL.

In the hollow tree, in the gray old tower,
The spectral owl doth dwell;

Dull, hated, despised, in the sunshine hour,
But at dusk he's abroad and well.

Not a bird of the forest e'er mates with him;
All mock him outright by day;

But at night, when the woods grow still and dim,
The boldest will shrink away:

Oh, when the night falls, and roosts the fowl,
Then, then is the reign of the horned owl!

And the owl hath a bride who is fond and bold,

And loveth the wood's deep gloom;

And with eyes like the shine of the moonshine cold
She awaiteth her ghostly groom!

Not a feather she moves, nor a carol she sings,
As she waits in her tree so still;

But when her heart heareth his flapping wings
She hoots out her welcome shrill !

Oh, when the moon shines, and the dogs do howl,
Then, then is the cry of the horned owl!

Mourn not for the owl, nor his gloomy plight!
The owl hath his share of good:

If a prisoner he be in the broad daylight,
He is lord in the dark greenwood!
Nor lonely the bird, nor his ghostly mate:
They are each unto each a pride, -

Thrice fonder, perhaps, since a strange, dark fate
Hath rent them from all beside!

So when the night falls, and dogs do howl,
Sing Ho! for the reign of the horned owl!

We know not alway who are kings by day,

But the king of the night is the bold, brown owl.
BARRY CORNWALL.

THE PARROT.

Humboldt once saw in South America a parrot which was the only living creature that could speak the language of a lost tribe.

DARWIN'S Descent of Man.

SAD fate is thine, most desolate of birds,

Left lonely 'midst the strangers in the land,

Repeating still the old familiar words,

That none can understand:

Words soft with love or plaintive with regret,
Fierce battle-cries and songs dead poets sung,
The voices of a nation linger yet

Upon thy tuneless tongue.

Words that once, haply, as with trumpet call,

Could thrill strong hearts, or draw forth prayer through tears,

Now, in a vain, unmeaning jargon, fall

Harsh on our alien ears.

Who were they, that lost people of the past,
Whose speech has fallen to a parrot's tone,
Whose name and memory have sunk at last
To syllables unknown?

I hear thee answer, speaking evermore
That strange, forgotten language of the dead,
But only dwellers on the shadowy shore
Can tell what thou hast said.

They come not at thy call, the vanished faces,
Nor any answering voice from out Time's wrack!
Vain is thy waiting in these vacant places
For those who come not back.

Wait on, poor waif; the ways of Time are strange;
Men like a dream will pass, nor come again;
But firm, 'midst all the tides of Chance and Change,
Thy story shall remain.

Chamber's Journal.