To spicy groves, where he had won
His plumage of resplendent hue--
His native fruits, and skies, and sun--
He bade adieu.
For these he changed the smoke of turf,
A heathery land and misty sky;
And turn'd on rocks and raging surf
His golden eye.
But, petted, in our climate cold,
He lived and chatter'd many a day;
Until, with age, from green and gold
His wings grew grey.
At last, when blind and seeming dumb,
He scolded, laugh'd, and spoke no more,
A Spanish stranger chanced to come
To Mulla's shore.
He hail'd the bird in Spanish speech,
The bird in Spanish speech replied:
Flapt round his cage with joyous screech--
Dropt down and died.
CAMPBELL.
* * * * *
THE STARLING.
[Illustration: Letter T.]
'Tis true, said I, correcting the proposition--the Bastile is not an
evil to be despised; but strip it of its towers, fill the fosse,
unbarricade the doors, call it simply a confinement, and suppose it is
some tyrant of a distemper, and not a man which holds you in it, the
evil vanishes, and you bear the other half without complaint. I was
interrupted in the heyday of this soliloquy, with a voice which I took
to be of a child, which complained "It could not get out.
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