You ask me why I long to fly Out from your palace to the dreamy woods, And the summer solitude, Why I pine In this cage of mine; Why I fret, Why I set All manner of querulous echoes fluttering forth From the cold North And wandering southward with beseeching pain In every strain. Ask me not, Task me not With such vain questions, but fling wide the door And hinder me no more; Give back my wings to me, And the wild current of my liberty. * * * * * * Oh if you please Give me release! Open the gate Of this cage of Fate And let me mount the South wind and go down To Bay St. Louis town, Where the brown bees hum In amber mists of pollen and perfume; And the roses gush a-bloom! * * * * * * Fainter, fainter—so My life-stream sinks—runs low. Ah! Oh! Open the cage and let me go. Floating, dreaming, revelling, dying, down To my mate, my queen, my love In the fragrant drowsy grove Beyond the flowery closes of Bay St. Louis town. * * * * * It was very still for a moment, and something fell on Sarah Barnes’ work that was bright, but it wasn’t a needle! Then, looking across at the cage, but addressing Gray Lady, she said, “We’ve paid for the shingles, and the hay, and the horse-blanket, and a chest-protector, besides, for the horse to wear all the time, to keep the uphill wind off his lungs. We’ve bought the bags of sweepings for the feeding-places, and there’s three dollars and eighty-five cents left. “Couldn’t the Kind Hearts’ Club have a meeting _right away_, and vote to send Old Ned’s Mocker back down South by express, _now_, before he, maybe, dies, so’s he’d be there to meet spring, even if old Ned can’t? Then he’d have time to look up a mate in case his old one has got tired of waiting for him,” she added in a more cheerful tone. Gray Lady said that, as all the members were present, a special meeting would be in order; and two days later the Mockingbird started for the southern home of one of Gray Lady’s school friends, with a “special” tag on his well-wrapped cage and a bottle of extra food fastened outside. Oh, the untold misery and waste of this caging and selling of free-born birds! It is only one grade less direct a slaughter than killing them to trim a bonnet. While the sufferings of the bonnet-bird end at once, with its life, those of the caged bird have only begun as the door closes behind him. A few exceptional cases, where birds in care of those who are both able and willing to make their surroundings endurable, count as nothing against the general condemnation of the practice of caging birds born wild.