“THE BIRD WITH THE BROKEN PINION.”
This lay of a lost gift, with its striking lesson, might have been copied from the wounded bird's own song, it is so natural and so clear-toned. The opportune thought and pen of Mr. Hezekiah Butterworth gave being to the little ballad the day he heard the late Dr. George Lorimer preach from a text in the story of Samson's fall (Judges 16:21) “The Philistines took him, and put out his eyes, and brought him down to Gaza ... 297 / 253 and he did grind in the prison-house.” A sentence in the course of the doctor's sermon, “The bird with a broken pinion never soars as high again,” was caught up by the listening author, and became the refrain of his impressive song. Rev. Frank M. Lamb, the tuneful evangelist, found it in print, and wrote a tune to it, and in his voice and the voices of other singers the little monitor has since told its story in revival meetings, and mission and gospel services throughout the land.
I walked through the woodland meadows
Where sweet the thrushes sing,
And found on a bed of mosses
A bird with a broken wing.
I healed its wound, and each morning
It sang its old sweet strain,
But the bird with a broken pinion
Never soared as high again.
I found a young life broken
By sin's seductive art;
And, touched 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 soared as high again.
But the bird with a broken pinion
Kept another from the snare,
And the life that sin had stricken
Saved another from despair.
Each loss has its compensation,
There is healing for every pain
But the bird with a broken pinion
Never soars as high again.
In the tune an extra stanza is added—as if something conventional were needed to make the poem a hymn. But the professional tone of the appended stanza, virtually all in its two lines—
Then come to the dear Redeemer,
He will cleanse you from every stain,
—is forced into its connection. The poem told the truth, and stopped there; and should be left to fasten its own impression. There never was a more solemn warning uttered than in this little apologue. It promises “compensation” and “healing,” but not perfect rehabilitation. Sin will leave its scars. Even He who “became sin for us” bore them in His resurrection body.
Rev. Frank M. Lamb, composer and singer of the hymn-tune, was born in Poland, Me., 1860, and educated in the schools of Poland and Auburn. He was licensed to preach in 1888, and ordained the same year, and has since held pastorates in Maine, New York, and Massachusetts.
Besides his tune, very pleasing and appropriate music has been written to the little ballad of the broken wing by Geo. C. Stebbins.