Explore "The Rook and the Sparrows" by Charles Lamb on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
A little boy with crumbs of bread / Many a hungry sparrow fed.
It was a child of little sense / Who this kind bounty did dispense; / For suddenly 'twas from them torn, / And all the birds were left forlorn / In a hard time of frost and snow, / Not knowing where for food to go.
He would no longer give them bread, / Because he had observed, he said, / A great black bird, a rook by name, / That sometimes to the window came / And took away a small bird's share.
So foolish Henry did not care / What became of the great rook / That from the little sparrows took, / Now and then, as 'twere by stealth, / A part of their abundant wealth;
Nor ever more would feed his sparrows. / _Thus ignorance a kind heart narrows._ / I wish I had been there, I would / Have told the child, rooks live by food / In the same way the sparrows do.
I also would have told him too / Birds act by instinct, and ne'er can / Attain the rectitude of man.
Nay, that even when distress / Does on poor human nature press, / We need not be too strict in seeing / The failings of a fellow-being.