Our feathered families, Volume 1

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Page 30 - 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 165 - Hail to thee, blithe Spirit! Bird thou never wert, That from Heaven, or near it, Pourest thy full heart In profuse strains of unpremeditated art. Higher still and higher From the earth thou springest Like a cloud of fire; The blue deep thou wingest, And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.
Page 83 - 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 255 - THE GREEN LINNET BENEATH these fruit-tree boughs that shed Their snow-white blossoms on my head, With brightest sunshine round me spread Of spring's unclouded weather, In this sequestered nook how sweet To sit upon my orchard-seat ! And birds and flowers once more to greet. My last year's friends together.
Page 27 - But the Nightingale, another of my airy creatures, breathes such sweet loud music out of her little instrumental throat, that it might make mankind to think miracles are not ceased. He that at midnight, when the very labourer sleeps securely, should hear, as I have very often, the clear airs, the sweet descants, the natural rising and falling, the doubling and redoubling of her voice, might well be lifted above earth, and say...
Page 13 - These are thy glorious works, Parent of good, Almighty ! thine this universal frame, Thus wondrous fair: thyself how wondrous then, Unspeakable ! who sitt'st above these heavens To us invisible, or dimly seen In these thy lowest works; yet these declare Thy goodness beyond thought, and power divine.
Page 132 - With joy — and oft an unintruding guest, I watched her secret toils from day to day, How true she warped the moss to form her nest, And modelled it within with wood and clay.
Page 160 - He put them in the basket, and tying an old handkerchief over it, he took them to the schoolmaster's house. Just as he arrived at the door, he saw the two little boys who had been setting the trap, and with alarm he asked them if they had caught any birds.
Page 216 - Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing ? And one of them shall not fall to the ground without your Father.
Page 159 - THE BISHOP AND THE BIRDS. A BISHOP, who had for his arms two fieldfares, with the motto, " Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing...

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