"Oh, the sky, the sky, the open sky, For the home of a song-bird's heart! And why, and why, and for ever why, Do they stifle here in the mart: Cages of agony, rows on rows, Torture that only a wild thing knows: Is it nothing to you to see That head thrust out through the hopeless wire, And the tiny life, and the mad desire To be free, to be free, to be free? Oh, the sky, the sky, the blue, wide sky, For the beat of a song-bird's wings! * * * Straight and close are the cramping bars From the dawn of mist to the chill of stars, And yet it must sing or die! Will its marred harsh voice in the city street Make any heart of you glad? It will only beat with its wings and beat, It will only sing you mad. * * * If it does not go to your heart to see The helpless pity of those bruised wings, The tireless effort to which it clings To the strain and the will to be free, I know not how I shall set in words The meaning of God in this, For the loveliest thing in this world of His Are the ways and the songs of birds. But the sky, the sky, the wide, free sky, For the home of the song-bird's heart!" How falsely does that man see Nature, how grossly ignorant must he be of its most elemental truths, who looks upon it as a chamber of torture, a physiological laboratory on a very vast scale, a scene of endless strife and trepidation, of hunger and cold, and every form of pain and misery--and who, holding this doctrine of "Oh, the sky, the sky, the open sky is the home of a song-bird's heart,"