Alas! its fragile bloom was gone,
Its gracile frame was sorely hurt,
Its silken pinions drooped forlorn,
Disfigured by the dust and dirt;

Its life, a moment since so gay,
So joyous in its dainty flight,
Was slowly ebbing now away,--
Its too-brief day eclipsed by night.

Meantime, the vandal, face aflame,
Surveyed it dying in his grasp,
Yet knew no grief nor sense of shame
In watching for its final gasp.

At last its sails of gold and brown,
Of texture fine and colors rare,
Came, death-struck, slowly fluttering down,
No more to cleave the sunlit air;

One happy, harmless being less,
To bid us dream the world is sweet!
Gone like a gleam of happiness,
A glimpse of rapture ... incomplete!

Yet who shall say this creature fair
In God's sight had a smaller worth
Than that dull lout who watched it there,
And in its death found cause for mirth?