TO A CITY PIGEON.

C. Seymour.

Stoop to my window, thou beautiful Dove !
Thy daily visits have touched my love;
I watch thy coming, and list the note
That stirs so low in thy mellow throat,

And my joy is high
To catch a glance of thy gentle eye.

Why dost thou sit on the heated eaves,
And forsake the wood, with its freshen'd leaves ?
Why dost thou haunt the sultry street,
When the paths of the forest are cool and sweet?

How canst thou bear
This noise of people—this breathless air ?

Thou alone of the feather'd race
Dost look unscared on the human race;

Thou alone, with a wing to flee,
Dost love with man his haunts to be ;

And the “gentle Dove"
Has become a name for trust and love.

A holy gift is thine, sweet bird !
Thou’rt named with childhood's earliest word;
Thou 'rt link'd with all that is fresh and wild
In the prison'd thoughts of the city child ;

And thy even wings
Are its brightest image of moving things.

It is no light chance: thou art set apart,
Wisely, by Him who tamed the heart,
To stir the love for the bright and fair,
That else were seal'd in the crowded air.

I sometimes dream
Angelic rays from thy pinions stream.

Come! then, ever, when daylight leaves
The page I read, to my humble eaves ;
And wash thy breast in the hollow spout,
And murmur thy low, sweet music out-

I hear and see
Lessons of Heaven, sweet bird, in thee!

BIRDS, joyous birds of the wand'ring wing! Whence is it ye come with the flowers of spring ? -“We come from the shores of the green old

Nile, From the land where the roses of Sharon smile; From the palms that wave through the Indian sky, From the myrrh-trees of glowing Araby.

“ We have swept o'er cities, in song renown'dSilent they lie, with the deserts round ! We have cross'd proud rivers, whose tide hath

roll’d All dark with the warrior blood of old ; And each worn wing hath regain'd its home, Under peasant's roof-tree, or monarch's dome.”

And what have

ye

found in the monarch's dome, Since last ye traversed the blue sea's foam ?

-“We have found a change, we have found a

pall, And a gloom o'ershadowing the banquet's hall, And a mark on the floor, as of life-drops spiltNought looks the same, save the nest we built !”

Oh, joyous birds, it hath still been so !
Through the halls of kings doth the tempest go!
But the huts of the hamlet lie still and deep,
And the hills o'er their quiet a vigil keep.
Say, what have ye found in the peasant's cot,
Since last ye parted from the sweet spot.

-“ A change we have found there, and many a

change! Faces and footsteps, and all things strange! Gone are the heads of the silvery hair, And the young that were have a brow of care; And the place is hush'd where the children play'dNought looks the same, save the nest we made !”

Sad is your tale of the beautiful earth,
Birds, that o'ersweep it in power and mirth!
Yet, through the wastes of the trackless air,
Ye have a guide, and shall we despair?
Ye over desert and deep have pass’d-
So shall we reach our home at last !

run his

VARIED as his plumes, and as his plumes
Blend beauteous each with each, so

notes,
Smoothly, with many a happy rise and fall.
How prettily upon his parded breast
The vividly-contrasted tints unite
To please the admiring eye! So, loud and soft,
And high and low, all in his notes combine,
In alternation sweet, to charm the ear.