Of crumbs, or shelter from the icy breath
Of wild winds rushing from the Polar sea:
For now November, with a brumal robe,
Mantles the moist and desolated earth;
Dim sullen clouds hang o'er the cheerless sky,
And yellow leaves bestrew the undergrove.

'Tis earliest sunrise. Through the hazy mass
Of vapours moving on like shadowy isles,
Athwart the pale, gray, spectral cope of heaven,
With what a feeble, inefficient glow
Looks out the Day; all things are still and calm,
Half wreathed in azure mist the skeleton woods,
And as a picture silent. Little bird!
Why with unnatural tameness comest thou thus,
Offering in fealty thy sweet simple songs
To the abode of man? Hath the rude wind
Chilled thy sweet woodland home, now quite despoiled
Of all its summer greenery, and swept
The bright, close, sheltering bowers, where merrily
Rang out thy notes--as of a haunting sprite,
There domiciled--the long blue summer through?
Moulders untenanted thy trim-built nest,
And do the unpropitious fates deny
Food for thy little wants, and Penury,
With tiny grip, drive thee to dubious walls,--
Though terrors flutter at thy panting heart,--
To stay the pangs which must be satisfied?
Alas! the dire sway of Necessity
Oft makes the darkest, most repugnant things
Familiar to us; links us to the feet
Of all we feared, or hated, or despised;
And, mingling poison with our daily food,
Yet asks the willing heart and smiling cheek:
Yea! to our subtlest and most tyrannous foes,
May we be driven for shelter, and in such
May our sole refuge lie, when all the joys,
That, iris-like, wantoned around our paths
Of prosperous fortune, one by one have died;
When day shuts in upon our hopes, and night
Ushers blank darkness only. Therefore we
Should pity thee, and have compassion on
Thy helpless state, poor bird, whose loveliness
Is yet unscathed, and whose melodious notes,
(Sweeter by melancholy rendered,) steal
With a deep supplication to the heart,
Telling that thou wert happy once--that now
Thou art most destitute; and yet, and yet--
Only were thy small pinching wants supplied
By Charity--couldst be most happy still!--
Is it not so?

Out on unfeeling man!
Will he who drives the beggar from his gates,
And to the moan of fellow-man shuts up