You ask me why
I long to fly
Out from your palace to the dreamy woods,
And the summer solitude,
Why I pine
In this cage of mine;
Why I fret,
Why I set
All manner of querulous echoes fluttering forth
From the cold North
And wandering southward with beseeching pain
In every strain.
Ask me not,
Task me not
With such vain questions, but fling wide the door
And hinder me no more;
Give back my wings to me,
And the wild current of my liberty.
* * * * * *
Oh if you please
Give me release!
Open the gate
Of this cage of Fate
And let me mount the South wind and go down
To Bay St. Louis town,
Where the brown bees hum
In amber mists of pollen and perfume;
And the roses gush a-bloom!
* * * * * *
Fainter, fainter—so
My life-stream sinks—runs low.
Ah!
Oh!
Open the cage and let me go.
Floating, dreaming, revelling, dying, down
To my mate, my queen, my love
In the fragrant drowsy grove
Beyond the flowery closes of Bay St. Louis town.
* * * * *
It was very still for a moment, and something fell on Sarah Barnes’ work
that was bright, but it wasn’t a needle! Then, looking across at the
cage, but addressing Gray Lady, she said, “We’ve paid for the shingles,
and the hay, and the horse-blanket, and a chest-protector, besides, for
the horse to wear all the time, to keep the uphill wind off his lungs.
We’ve bought the bags of sweepings for the feeding-places, and there’s
three dollars and eighty-five cents left.
“Couldn’t the Kind Hearts’ Club have a meeting _right away_, and vote to
send Old Ned’s Mocker back down South by express, _now_, before he,
maybe, dies, so’s he’d be there to meet spring, even if old Ned can’t?
Then he’d have time to look up a mate in case his old one has got tired
of waiting for him,” she added in a more cheerful tone.
Gray Lady said that, as all the members were present, a special meeting
would be in order; and two days later the Mockingbird started for the
southern home of one of Gray Lady’s school friends, with a “special” tag
on his well-wrapped cage and a bottle of extra food fastened outside.
Oh, the untold misery and waste of this caging and selling of free-born
birds! It is only one grade less direct a slaughter than killing them to
trim a bonnet. While the sufferings of the bonnet-bird end at once, with
its life, those of the caged bird have only begun as the door closes
behind him.
A few exceptional cases, where birds in care of those who are both able
and willing to make their surroundings endurable, count as nothing
against the general condemnation of the practice of caging birds born
wild.
Those of us who have known, by experience, in caring for wounded or sick
birds, exactly what incessant watchfulness is necessary to keep them
alive, realize how impossible it is that this care should be given them
by the average purchaser.
Birds born and reared in captivity, like the Canary, are the only ones
that real humanity should keep behind bars. There is no more condemnable
habit than taking nestlings of any kind, and trying to rear them, unless
disaster overtakes the parents.
Nominally, the traffic in caged wild birds has ceased; actually, it has
not; nor will it until every bird-lover feels himself responsible for
staying the hand that would rob the nest, whether it is that of the
ignorant little pickaninny of the South, who climbs up the vine outside
the window where you are wintering, and sees, in the four young Mockers,
in the nest just under the sill, a prospective dollar; the child at
home, who likes to experiment for a few days with pets, and then forgets
them; or the wily dealer, who sells secretly what he dares not exhibit.
No quarter to any class who make prisoners of the wild, outside of the
zoölogical gardens or the few private outdoor aviaries, where the proper
conditions exist.
Any free citizen prefers death to loss of liberty, and even the most
material mind will, at least, allow this human quality to Citizen Bird,
while it proves that he or she who either cages or buys the captive
wholly lacks the spiritual quality.