Conversations introducing poetry :: :: University of Virginia Library

“A suppliant to your window comes,
“Who trusts your faith and fears no guile,
“He claims admittance for your crumbs,
“And reads his passport in your smile.

“For cold and cheerless is the day,
“And he has sought the hedges round;
“No berry hangs upon the spray,
“Nor worm nor ant-egg can be found.

“Secure his suit will be preferr'd,
“No fears his slender feet deter;
“For sacred is the household bird
“That wears the scarlet stomacher.”

Lucy the prayer assenting heard,
The feather'd suppliant flew to her,
And fondly cherish'd was the bird,
That wears the scarlet stomacher.

Embolden'd then, he'd fearless perch
Her netting or her work among,
For crumbs among her drawings search,
And add his music to her song;

And warbling on her snowy arm,
Or half entangled in her hair,
Seemed conscious of the double charm
Of freedom, and protection there.

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A graver moralist, who used
From all some lesson to infer,
Thus said, as on the bird she mused,
Pluming his scarlet stomacher—

“Where are his gay companions now,
“Who sung so merrily in Spring?
“Some shivering on the leafless bough,
“With ruffled plume, and drooping wing.

“Some in the hollow of a cave,
“Consign'd to temporary death;
“And some beneath the sluggish wave
“Await reviving nature's breath.

“The migrant tribes are fled away,
“To skies were insect myriads swarm,
“They vanish with the Summer day,
“Nor bide the bitter northern storm.

“But still is this sweet minstrel heard,
“While lours December dark and drear,
“The social, chearful, household bird,
“That wears the scarlet stomacher.

“And thus in life's propitious hour,
“Approving flatterers round us sport,
“But if the faithless prospect lour,
“They the more happy fly to court.