"I am sorry that I've taken
The lives I can't restore;
And this regret shall teach me
To do the like no more.
"I ever shall remember
The wailing sound I've heard!
No more I'll kill a nestling,
To pain a mother-bird!"
=The Bat's Flight By Daylight An Allegory=.
A Bat one morn from his covert flew,
To show the world what a Bat could do,
By soaring off on a lofty flight,
In the open day, by the sun's clear light!
He quite forgot that he had for wings
But a pair of monstrous, plumeless things;
That, more than half like a fish's fin,
With a warp of bone, and a woof of skin,
Were only fit in the dark to fly,
In view of a bat's or an owlet's eye.
He sallied forth from his hidden hole,
And passed the door of his neighbor, Mole,
Who shrugged, and said, "Of the two so blind
The wisest, surely, stays behind!"
But he could not cope with the glare of day:
He lost his sight, and he missed his way;--
He wheeled on his flapping wings, till, "bump!"
His head went, hard on the farm-yard pump.
Then, stunned and posed, as he met the ground,
A stir and a shout in the yard went round;
For its tenants thought they had one come there,
That seemed not of water, earth, or air.
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