The Wounded Bird

by Hannah Flagg Gould

Here's the last food your poor mother can bring!
Take it, my suffering brood!
Oh! they have stricken me under the wing;
See, it is dripping with blood!

Fair was the morn, and I wished them to rise
And taste of its beauties with me;
The air was all fragrance, all splendor the skies;
And bright shone the earth and the sea.

Little I thought, when so freely I went,
Spending my earliest breath
To wake them with song, it could be their intent
To pay me with arrows and death!

Fear that my nestlings would feel them forgot
Helped me, a moment, to fly;
Else, I had given up life on the spot,
Under my murderer's eye.

Feeble and faint, I have reached you, at length,
Over the hill and the plain,
Strewing my feathers, and losing my strength,
Wounded and throbbing with pain!

Yet, I can never brood o'er you again,
Closing you under my breast!
Its coldness would chill you; my blood would but stain
And spoil the warm down in your nest.

Ere the night-coming, your mother will lie
Motionless, under the tree --
Helpless and silent, I still shall be nigh,
While ye are moaning for me!