Page:Fugitive Poetry 1600-1878.djvu/223

 So when he woke at the fall of the dew, He called his wife with a loud too-whoo; "Awake, dear wife, it is evening grey, And our joys live from the death of day." He called once more, and he shuddered when No voice replied to his voice again; Yet still unwilling to believe, (And should it be, how he would grieve), That Evil's raven wing was spread, Hovering over his guiltless head, And shutting out joy from his hollow tree. "Ha—ha—they play me a trick," quoth he, "They will not speak—well, well, at night They'll talk enough, I'll take a flight." But still he went not in nor out, But hopped uneasily about.

What then did the father owl? He sat still, until below He heard cries of pain and woe, And saw his wife and children three, Tn a young boy's captivity. He followed them on noiseless wing, Not a cry once uttering. They went to a mansion tall; He sat in a window of the hall, Where he could see His bewildered family; And he heard the hall with laughter ring, When the boy said, "Blind they'll learn to sing And he heard the shriek when the hot steel pin Through their eyeballs was thrust in! He felt it all! Their agony Was echoed by his frantic cry, His scream rose up with a mighty swell, And wild on the boy's fierce heart it fell; It quailed him as he shuddering said, "Lo, the little birds are dead!" —But the father owl! He tore his breast in his despair, And flew—he knew not, recked not, where.

But whither, then, went the father owl, With his wild stare and deathly scowl? —He had got a strange, wild stare; For he thought he saw them ever there; And he screamed as they screamed when he saw them fall Dead on the floor of the marble hall.