Muffled with poignant pain.

Long ago, in the mad glad May days,
Woo'd I one who was with us still;
Bade him wake to the world's blithe heydays,
Leap in joyance and eat his fill;
Sang I, sweet as the bright-billed ousel, a
Pæan of praise for thy pal, Methuselah.
Ah! he too in the Winter's grey days
Died of the usual chill.

He was old when the Reaper beckoned,
Ripe for the paying of Nature's debt;
Forty score--if he'd lived a second--
Years had flown, but he lingered yet;
But you had gladdened this vale of tears
For a bare two hundred and fifty years;
You, Georgina, we always reckoned
One of the younger set.

Winter's cold and the influenza
Wreaked and ravaged the ranks among;
Bills that babbled a gay cadenza,
Snouts that snuffled and claws that clung--
Now they whistle and root and run
In Happy Valleys beyond the sun;
Never back to the ponds and pens a
Sigh of regret is flung.

Flaming parrots and pink flamingoes,