Book 2 — THE LYRE BIRD.

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BY N. C. BROOKS.

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The Menura Superba, a species of the Bird of Paradise, is also called the Lyre Bird, from the perfect resemblance of the tail to an ancient lyre. Its powers of song are very great. It commences singing in the morning, and gradually ascends some eminence as it sings.—Shaw’s Zoology.

Bird of the forest, thy form is fair

As a summer cloud on the evening air,

And the golden plumage upon thee lies

In tintings rich as a rainbow’s dyes;

Yet fairer wert thou when thy form, at first

From the hands of God like a sunbeam burst,

When the velvet shades of the forest glooms

Were lit with the light of thy golden plumes,

And angel eyes as they passed were turned

To the place where thy plumy glory burned.

But Sin, that with curse upon all hath lain,

Has dimmed thy gloss with many a stain;

And the summer’s heat, and the winter’s storm

Have blighted and blasted thy early form.

Bird of the forest, thy song is sweet

As breezes that summer wavelets greet,

And thy liquid notes melt into one,

Like hearts of lovers in unison.

Yet sweeter far were thy tones that broke

The spell of silence when Eden woke,

And angel forms on their plumes delayed,

To list to thy notes ’mid the garden shade;

And, ceasing to sweep their chords of fire,

In wonder gazed on thy mimic lyre.

Since the eve when the stilly grove was stirred

By the voice of God in the garden heard,

And the cherubs waved the fiery sword

At Eden’s gate ’gainst its banished lord—

Since the brow of the guilty Earth was bent

’Neath the sentence of sin’s dread punishment,

A spell of woe on thy heart has lain,

Sorrow has saddened thy dulcet strain;

And the grief of the exile that pines alone

Is heard in the breathing of every tone.

Still pour thy song; and still mount higher

With the day-god. Bird of the plumy lyre!

And know as thou pourest thy saddened strain,

That the meek heart is purified by pain,

And at length will rest on a palmy shore,

Where grief and suffering are no more.

In that sweet land from all sorrow free,

There’s a place of bliss, lone bird, for thee;

With the beasts of the field and the birds of the shade,

Immortal as first when God had made.

There shall the strains of thy music flow

In a ceaseless stream, without note of woe;

And the gloss of thy pinions forever play

In the glorious beams of eternal day.