Because, when age has seized and made his dam
Unfit for flight, the grateful young one takes
His mother on his back, provides her food,
Repaying thus her tender care of him
Ere he was fit to fly.
Beaumont.
It is a bird of passage, and is spoken of as such in Scripture: “The stork knoweth her appointed time,” Jer. viii, 7.
Who bid the stork, Columbus-like, explore
Heavens not its own, and worlds unknown before?
Who calls the council, states the certain day,