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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409622" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Tales Of A Wayside Inn : Part 1. The Poet's Tale; The Birds of Killingworth</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409622" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">It was the season, when through all the land<br>The merle and mavis build, and building sing<br>Those lovely lyrics, written by His hand,<br>Whom Saxon Caedmon calls the Blitheheart King;<br>When on the boughs the purple buds expand,<br>The banners of the vanguard of the Spring,<br>And rivulets, rejoicing, rush and leap,<br>And wave their fluttering signals from the steep. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409622" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">The robin and the bluebird, piping loud,<br>Filled all the blossoming orchards with their glee;<br>The sparrows chirped as if they still were proud<br>Their race in Holy Writ should mentioned be;<br>And hungry crows assembled in a crowd,<br>Clamored their piteous prayer incessantly,<br>Knowing who hears the ravens cry, and said:<br>'Give us, O Lord, this day our daily bread!' </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409622" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Across the Sound the birds of passage sailed,<br>Speaking some unknown language strange and sweet<br>Of tropic isle remote, and passing hailed<br>The village with the cheers of all their fleet;<br>Or quarrelling together, laughed and railed<br>Like foreign sailors, landed in the street<br>Of seaport town, and with outlandish noise<br>Of oaths and gibberish frightening girls and boys. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409622" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Thus came the jocund Spring in Killingworth,<br>In fabulous days; some hundred years ago;<br>And thrifty farmers, as they tilled the earth,<br>Heard with alarm the cawing of the crow,<br>That mingled with the universal mirth,<br>Cassandra-like, prognosticating woe;<br>They shook their heads, and doomed with dreadful words<br>To swift destruction the whole race of birds. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409622" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And a town-meeting was convened straightway<br>To set a price upon the guilty heads<br>Of these marauders, who, in lieu of pay,<br>Levied black-mail upon the garden beds<br>And cornfields, and beheld without dismay<br>The awful scarecrow, with his fluttering shreds;<br>The skeleton that waited at their feast,<br>Whereby their sinful pleasure was increased. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409622" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Then from his house, a temple painted white,<br>With fluted columns, and a roof of red,<br>The Squire came forth, august and splendid sight!<br>Slowly descending, with majestic tread,<br>Three flights of steps, nor looking left nor right,<br>Down the long street he walked, as one who said,<br>'A town that boasts inhabitants like me<br>Can have no lack of good society!' </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409622" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">The Parson, too, appeared, a man austere,<br>The instinct of whose nature was to kill;<br>The wrath of God he preached from year to year,<br>And read, with fervor, Edwards on the Will;<br>His favorite pastime was to slay the deer<br>In Summer on some Adirondac hill;<br>E'en now, while walking down the rural lane,<br>He lopped the wayside lilies with his cane. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409622" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">From the Academy, whose belfry crowned<br>The hill of Science with its vane of brass,<br>Came the Preceptor, gazing idly round,<br>Now at the clouds, and now at the green grass,<br>And all absorbed in reveries profound<br>Of fair Almira in the upper class,<br>Who was, as in a sonnet he had said,<br>As pure as water, and as good as bread. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409622" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And next the Deacon issued from his door,<br>In his voluminous neck-cloth, white as snow;<br>A suit of sable bombazine he wore;<br>His form was ponderous, and his step was slow;<br>There never was so wise a man before;<br>He seemed the incarnate 'Well, I told you so!'<br>And to perpetuate his great renown<br>There was a street named after him in town. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409622" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">These came together in the new town-hall,<br>With sundry farmers from the region round.<br>The Squire presided, dignified and tall,<br>His air impressive and his reasoning sound;<br>Ill fared it with the birds, both great and small;<br>Hardly a friend in all that crowd they found,<br>But enemies enough, who every one<br>Charged them with all the crimes beneath the sun. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409622" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">When they had ended, from his place apart<br>Rose the Preceptor, to redress the wrong,<br>And, trembling like a steed before the start,<br>Looked round bewildered on the expectant throng;<br>Then thought of fair Almira, and took heart<br>To speak out what was in him, clear and strong,<br>Alike regardless of their smile or frown,<br>And quite determined not to be laughed down. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409622" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">'Plato, anticipating the Reviewers,<br>From his Republic banished without pity<br>The Poets; in this little town of yours,<br>You put to death, by means of a Committee,<br>The ballad-singers and the Troubadours,<br>The street-musicians of the heavenly city,<br>The birds, who make sweet music for us all<br>In our dark hours, as David did for Saul. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409622" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">'The thrush that carols at the dawn of day<br>From the green steeples of the piny wood;<br>The oriole in the elm; the noisy jay,<br>Jargoning like a foreigner at his food;<br>The bluebird balanced on some topmost spray,<br>Flooding with melody the neighborhood;<br>Linnet and meadow-lark, and all the throng<br>That dwell in nests, and have the gift of song. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409622" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">'You slay them all! and wherefore? for the gain<br>Of a scant handful more or less of wheat,<br>Or rye, or barley, or some other grain,<br>Scratched up at random by industrious feet,<br>Searching for worm or weevil after rain!<br>Or a few cherries, that are not so sweet<br>As are the songs these uninvited guests,<br>Sing at their feast with comfortable breasts. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409622" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">'Do you ne'er think what wondrous beings these?<br>Do you ne'er think who made them and who taught<br>The dialect they speak, where melodies<br>Alone are the interpreters of thought?<br>Whose household words are songs in many keys,<br>Sweeter than instrument of man e'er caught!<br>Whose habitations in the tree-tops even<br>Are half-way houses on the road to heaven! </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409622" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">'Think, every morning when the sun peeps through<br>The dim, leaf-latticed windows of the grove,<br>How jubilant the happy birds renew<br>Their old, melodious madrigals of love!<br>And when you think of this, remember too<br>'T is always morning somewhere, and above<br>The awakening continents; from shore to shore,<br>Somewhere the birds are singing evermore. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409622" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">'Think of your woods and orchards without birds!<br>Of empty nests that cling to boughs and beams<br>As in an idiot's brain remembered words<br>Hang empty 'mid the cobwebs of his dreams!<br>Will bleat of flocks or bellowing of herds<br>Make up for the lost music, when your teams<br>Drag home the stingy harvest, and no more<br>The feathered gleaners follow to your door? </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409622" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">'What! would you rather see the incessant stir<br>Of insects in the windrows of the hay,<br>And hear the locust and the grasshopper<br>Their melancholy hurdy-gurdies play?<br>Is this more pleasant to you than the whir<br>Of meadow-lark, and her sweet roundelay,<br>Or twitter of little field-fares, as you take<br>Your nooning in the shade of bush and brake? </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409622" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">'You call them thieves and pillagers; but know,<br>They are the wingéd wardens of your farms,<br>Who from the cornfields drive the insidious foe,<br>And from your harvests keep a hundred harms;<br>Even the blackest of them all, the crow,<br>Renders good service as your man-at-arms,<br>Crushing the beetle in his coat of mail,<br>And crying havoc on the slug and snail. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409622" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">'How can I teach your children gentleness,<br>And mercy to the weak, and reverence<br>For Life, which, in its weakness or excess,<br>Is still a gleam of God's omnipotence,<br>Or Death, which, seeming darkness, is no less<br>The selfsame light, although averted hence,<br>When by your laws, your actions, and your speech,<br>You contradict the very things I teach?' </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409622" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">With this he closed; and through the audience went<br>A murmur, like the rustle of dead leaves;<br>The farmers laughed and nodded, and some bent<br>Their yellow heads together like their sheaves;<br>Men have no faith in fine-spun sentiment<br>Who put their trust in bullocks and in beeves.<br>The birds were doomed; and, as the record shows,<br>A bounty offered for the heads of crows. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409622" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">There was another audience out of reach,<br>Who had no voice nor vote in making laws,<br>But in the papers read his little speech,<br>And crowned his modest temples with applause;<br>They made him conscious, each one more than each,<br>He still was victor, vanquished in their cause.<br>Sweetest of all the applause he won from thee,<br>O fair Almira at the Academy! </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409622" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And so the dreadful massacre began;<br>O'er fields and orchards, and o'er woodland crests,<br>The ceaseless fusillade of terror ran.<br>Dead fell the birds, with blood-stains on their breasts,<br>Or wounded crept away from sight of man,<br>While the young died of famine in their nests;<br>A slaughter to be told in groans, not words,<br>The very St. Bartholomew of Birds! </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409622" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">The Summer came, and all the birds were dead;<br>The days were like hot coals; the very ground<br>Was burned to ashes; in the orchards fed<br>Myriads of caterpillars, and around<br>The cultivated fields and garden beds<br>Hosts of devouring insects crawled, and found<br>No foe to check their march, till they had made<br>The land a desert without leaf or shade. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409622" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Devoured by worms, like Herod, was the town,<br>Because, like Herod, it had ruthlessly<br>Slaughtered the Innocents. From the trees spun down<br>The canker-worms upon the passers-by,<br>Upon each woman's bonnet, shawl, and gown,<br>Who shook them off with just a little cry<br>They were the terror of each favorite walk,<br>The endless theme of all the village talk. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409622" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">The farmers grew impatient but a few<br>Confessed their error, and would not complain,<br>For after all, the best thing one can do<br>When it is raining, is to let it rain.<br>Then they repealed the law, although they knew<br>It would not call the dead to life again;<br>As school-boys, finding their mistake too late,<br>Draw a wet sponge across the accusing slate. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409622" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">That year in Killingworth the Autumn came<br>Without the light of his majestic look,<br>The wonder of the falling tongues of flame,<br>The illumined pages of his Doom's-Day book.<br>A few lost leaves blushed crimson with their shame,<br>And drowned themselves despairing in the brook,<br>While the wild wind went moaning everywhere,<br>Lamenting the dead children of the air! </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409622" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">But the next Spring a stranger sight was seen,<br>A sight that never yet by bard was sung,<br>As great a wonder as it would have been<br>If some dumb animal had found a tongue!<br>A wagon, overarched with evergreen,<br>Upon whose boughs were wicker cages hung,<br>All full of singing birds, came down the street,<br>Filling the air with music wild and sweet. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409622" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">From all the country round these birds were brought,<br>By order of the town, with anxious quest,<br>And, loosened from their wicker prisons, sought<br>In woods and fields the places they loved best,<br>Singing loud canticles, which many thought<br>Were satires to the authorities addressed,<br>While others, listening in green lanes, averred<br>Such lovely music never had been heard! </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409622" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">But blither still and louder carolled they<br>Upon the morrow, for they seemed to know<br>It was the fair Almira's wedding-day,<br>And everywhere, around, above, below,<br>When the Preceptor bore his bride away,<br>Their songs burst forth in joyous overflow,<br>And a new heaven bent over a new earth<br>Amid the sunny farms of Killingworth.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><a href="http://poems.citatepedia.com/">poem</a> by <strong><a rel="author" href="http://authors.citatepedia.com/by.php?a=Henry+Wadsworth+Longfellow">Henry Wadsworth Longfellow</a></strong></div>