Poems of Letitia Elizabeth Landon (L. E. L.) in The Juvenile Forget Me Not, 1832/The Dead Robin
This poem was published again later in Traits and Trial of Early Life, 1836 pp145-146. However, as there are minor variations, the text below is transcribed from F. J. Sypher’s Poems from the Annuals. This poem should have an accompanying plate, "The Dead Robin", painted by H. Thomson, R.A. and engraved by W. Greatbach.
THE DEAD ROBIN.
IT is dead—it is dead—it will wake no more
With the earliest light, as it waked before—
And singing, as if it were glad to wake,
And wanted our longer sleep to break;
We found it a little unfledged thing,
With no plume to smooth and no voice to sing;
The father and mother both were gone,
And the callow nursling left alone!
For a wind, as fierce as those from the sea,
Had broken the boughs of the apple tree:
The scattered leaves lay thick on the ground,
And among them the nest and the bird we found.
We warmed it, and fed it, and made it a nest
Of Indian cotton, and watched its rest;
Its feathers grew soft, and its wings grew strong,
And happy it seemed as the day was long.
Do you remember its large dark eye—
How it brightened, when one of us came nigh?
How it would stretch its throat and sing,
And beat the osier cage with its wing—
Till we let it forth?—and it perched on our hand—
It needed not hood nor silken band,
Like the falcons we read of in days gone by,
Linked to the wrist, lest away they should fly.
But our bird knew not of the free blue air,
He had lived in his cage, and his home was there:
No flight had he in the green wood flown—
He pined not for freedom he never had known!
If he had lived amid leaf and bough
It had been cruel to fetter him now;
For I have seen a poor bird die,
And all for love of his native sky.
But our's would come to our cup and sip,
And peck the sugar away from our lip—
Would sit on our shoulder and sing, then creep
And nestle in our hands to sleep.
There is the water, and there is its seed,
Its cage hung round with the green chickweed;
But the food is untouched, the song is unheard—
Cold and stiff lies our beautiful bird!