Littell's Living Age/Volume 173/Issue 2242/Our Canary Bird

by Robert Leighton

Overhead in the lattice high
     Our little golden songster hung,
Singing, piping merrily,
     With dulcet throat and clipping tongue;
Singing from the peep of morning
     To the evening's closing eye;
When the sun in blue was burning,
     Or when clouds shut out the sky;
Foul or fair, morn, eve, or noon,
Its little pipe was still in tune.

Its breast was filled with fairy shells
     That gave sweet echo to its note,
And strings of tiny silver bells
     Rang with the pulsings of its throat;
Song all through its restless frame,
     Its very limbs were warbling strings:
I well believe that music came
     E'en from the tippings of its wings;
Piping early, late and long,
Mad with joy and drunk with song,
Oh, welcome to thy little store,
Thy song repays it o'er and o'er.