THE BIRD WITH THE BROKEN PINION

[Dr. Lorimer, of Boston, once happened to say:-"The bird with a broken wing never soars as high again." The phrase struck home to a hearer, who wrote this little poem on it. Years after Dr. Lorimer, visiting a church in Chicago, lifted his finger and all unconsciously pointing at a defaulter, said:- "There may be a defaulter here." God's convicting power immediately fell on the man; he was afterwards imprisoned in the State of Illinois; and, converted while within the walls, he picked up the little poem on the prison floor. Carefully he copied out the verses, and on leaving the prison devoted the rest of his life, in consequence of these lines, to work amongst men behind the bars - birds with the broken pinions. So he probably proved the lovely little poem wrong. - D. M. PANTON. ]

I walk'd through the woodland meadows,

Where sweet the thrushes sing;

And I found on a bed of mosses

A bird with a broken wing.

I heal'd its wound, and each morning

It sang its old sweet strain:

But the bird with a broken pinion

Never soar'd as high again.

I found a young life broken

By sin's seductive art;

And touchd with a Christ-like pity,

I took him to my heart.

He lived with a noble purpose,

And struggled not in vain:

But the life that sin had stricken

Never soar'd as high again.

But the bird with a broken pinion

Kept another from the snare;

And the life that sin had stricken

Raised another from despair.

Each loss has its compensation,

There is healing for every pain

Yet the bird with a broken pinion

Never soars as high again.