Sing away, ay, sing away,
Merry little bird.
Always gayest of the gay,
Though a woodland roundelay
You ne'er sung nor heard;
Though your life from youth to age
Passes in a narrow cage.
_The Canary in his Cage_. D.M. MULOCK CRAIK.
The cook, that is the trumpet to the morn.
Doth with his lofty and shrill-sounding throat
A wake the god of day.
_Hamlet. Act_ i. _Sc_. 1. SHAKESPEARE.
Bird of the broad and sweeping wing,
Thy home is high in heaven,
Where wide the storms their banners fling.
And the tempest clouds are driven.
_To the Eagle_. J.G. PERCIVAL.
Where, the hawk,
High in the beetling cliff, his aery builds.
_The Seasons: Spring_. J. THOMSON.
And the, humming-bird that hung
Like a jewel up among
The tilted honeysuckle horns
They mesmerized and swung
In the palpitating air,
Drowsed with odors strange and rare,
And, with whispered laughter, slipped away
And left him hanging there.
_The South Wind and the Sun_. J.W. RILEY.
"Most musical, most melancholy" bird!
A melancholy bird! Oh! idle thought!
In nature there is nothing melancholy.
_The Nightingale_. S.T. COLERIDGE.
Then from the neighboring thicket the mocking-bird, wildest of singers,
Swinging aloft on a willow spray that hung o'er the water,
Shook from his little throat such floods of delirious music,
That the whole air and the woods and the waves seemed silent to listen.
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