The Broken Pinion

From the Newark Evening Star, May 18, 1914. By Hezekiah Butterworth.

I walked through the woodland meadows,
    Where sweet the thrushes sing;
And I 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 the broken pinion
    Never soared as high again.

I found a young life broken
    By Sin’s seductive art;
And touched with a Christlike 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
    Raised 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.