THE BIRDS OF SCOTLAND

By Hugh Macdonald

THE birds of bonnie Scotland,
I love them one and all
The eagle soaring high in pride,
The wren so blithe and small.
I love the cushat in the wood,
The heron by the stream,
The lark that sings the stars
asleep,

The merle that wakes their beam.

O the birds of dear old Scotland,

I love them every one

The owl that leaves the tower by night,

The swallow in the sun.

I love the raven on the rock,
The sea-bird on the shore,
The merry chaffinch in the wood,
And the curlew on the moor.

O the birds of bonnie Scotland,
How lovely are they all!
The ousel by the forest spring
Or lonely waterfall!

The thrush that from the leafless bough

Delights the infant year,

The redbreast wailing sad and lone,

When leaves are falling sear.

O for the time when first I roamed
The woodland and the field,
A silent sharer in the joy

Each summer minstrel pealed.
Their nests I knew them every one
In bank, or bush, or tree;
Familiar as a voice of home,
Their every tone of glee.

They tell of birds in other climes
In richest plumage gay,

With

gorgeous tints that far outshine
An eastern king's array.

Strangers to song! more dear to me
The linnet, modest gray,

That pipes among the yellow broom
His wild, heart-witching lay.

More dear than all their shining hues,
The wells of glee that lie

In throstle's matchless mottled breast
Or merle's of ebon dye.

And though a lordling's wealth were mine,
In some far sunny spot,
My heart could never own a home
Where minstrel birds were not.

Sweet wilding birds of Scotland,

I loved ye when a boy,

And to my soul your names are linked
With dreams of vanished joy.

And I could wish, when death's cold hand

Has stilled this heart of mine,
That o'er my last low bed of earth
Might swell your notes divine.

TO AN ORIOLE

By Edgar Fawcett

OW falls it, oriole, thou hast
come to fly

In tropic splendor through our
Northern sky?

At some glad moment was it nature's choice

To dower a scrap of sunset with
a voice?

Or did some orange tulip, flaked with black,
In some forgotten garden, ages back,

Yearning toward Heaven until its wish was heard,
Desire unspeakably to be a bird?

B

A TOAD

By Edgar Fawcett

LUE dusk, that brings the dewy hours,
Brings thee, of graceless form in sooth,
Dark stumbler at the roots of flowers,
Flaccid, inert, uncouth.

I

Right ill can human wonder guess
Thy meaning or thy mission here,
Gray lump of mottled clamminess,
With that preposterous leer!

But when I meet thy dull bulk where
Luxurious roses bend and burn,
Or some slim lily lifts to air
Its frail and fragrant urn,

Of these, among the garden-ways,
So grim a watcher dost thou seem,
That I, with meditative gaze,

Look down on thee and dream

Of thick-lipped slaves, with ebon skin,
That squat in hideous dumb repose,
And guard the drowsy ladies in
Their still seraglios!

A WHITE CAMELLIA

By Edgar Fawcett

MPERIAL bloom, whose every curve we see
So glacial a symmetry control,

Looking, in your pale odorless apathy,

Like the one earthly flower that has no soul,

With all sweet radiance bathed in chill eclipse,
Pure shape of colorless majesty, you seem
The rose that silence first laid on her lips,
Far back among the shadowy days of dream!

By such inviolate calmness you are girt,

I doubt, while wondering at the spell it weaves,
If even decay's dark hand shall dare to hurt
The marble immobility of your leaves !
For never sunbeam yet had power to melt
This virginal coldness, absolute as though
Diana's awful chastity still dwelt

Regenerate amid your blossoming snow.
And while my silent reverie deeply notes
What arctic torpor in your bosom lies,
A wandering thought across my spirit floats,
Like a new bird along familiar skies.

White ghost, in centuries past, has dread mischance Thus ruined your vivid warmth, your fragrant breath,

While making you, by merciless ordinance,

The first of living flowers that gazed on death?

THE HUMMING-BIRD

A

By John Banister Tabb

FLASH of harmless lightning,
A mist of rainbow dyes,

The burnished sunbeams brightening,
From flower to flower he flies:

While wakes the nodding blossom,

But just too late to see

What lip hath touched her bosom

And drained her nectary.