Stained with blood and never tiring
With its beak it doth not cease,
From the Cross ’t would free the Saviour
Its creator’s son release.
And the Saviour speaks in mildness:
Blest be thou of all the good!
Bear as token of this moment
Marks of blood and holy rood.
So Longfellow paraphrases Julius Mosen’s little German hymn.
The same loving service has been attributed to the red-browed goldfinch of Europe in a legend current in Great Britain—a story put into verse in The Spectator (London, 1910) by Pamela Tenant, partly thus: