David was a king of great wealth also, but there was sweetness and humility about him that was infinitely touching. He wrote the tenderest things with divine purity. His imagery was very simple, but wonderfully appealing. If none of his historians had recorded it, I always should have been sure that David was a musician as well as a poet, and the harp the instrument on which he played and, without doubt, to which he sang. The pomp, power, and riches of royal life tinctured the very blood of Solomon and gave colour to his writings. The lines of David are full of appeal, touched with rejoicing, and tempered by a white flame of holiness. His writings are like a bed of snowy lilies blooming in a tender valley under the sweep of fragrant winds. His first bird-song resembles Chinese poetry:

"I will trust in the covert of Thy wings."

David said of himself, "I know all the fowls of the mountains," and his writings and the manner in which he incorporated the birds proved that he was very familiar with them; not casually, as any other aspect of nature, but intimately in their home life. No doubt he became acquainted with all of them when, as a boy, he herded the great flocks of his father as they fed over the hills and pastures. What he recorded of them proved his heart exceedingly gentle and tender. No other Bible scribe wrote things of such pure heart-interest as David. Watching the parent bird move over her nest to shelter the helpless young, he saw a picture of trusting love, and so he cried out to the Almighty, "I will trust in the covert of Thy wings."

Again, with the same thought in mind, he broke into the most exquisite poetic utterance when he assured those to whom he spoke of the care and tenderness of the Almighty :

"He shall cover thee with His feathers,

And under His wings shall thou trust."

David's knowledge of bird habits was in his mind when

he penned that Song of Trust, which is a beautiful example of his faith in God and his art as a poet :

The rocky fastnesses of the very tops of the mountains were the especial property of the eagles. When, after long ranging far from home, they captured prey for hungertortured young, or barely escaped the arrows of bowmen, and went flashing across the sky faster than any living thing could traverse earth, the observant eye of David caught the full force of the picture they made. So he cried to his soul, "Flee as a bird to your mountain." The unparalleled beauty of these lines fired the heart of another poet ages later, and based upon them he wrote one of the most appealing and refined outbursts of song ever used in worship:

Flee as a bird to your mountain,

Thou who art weary of sin,

Close by the clear, cooling fountain,

There mayst thou wash and be clean!"

Then a musician read those lines until the ecstasy of David began to swell in his soul, and music touched with Divinity to equal the words flowed from his finger tips.

When David sang the Exile's Song of Rejoicing over his deliverance, and praised the Almighty for His care of the Church, he uttered a high bird-note:

Who hath not given us a prey to their teeth.
Our soul is escaped as a bird out of the snare of

the fowlers :

The snare is broken and we are escaped."

This makes one see good feeding-ground, the scarcely concealed snare, the unsuspecting bird walking straight into it, the quick tightening of the hair, and the wings that an instant ago ranged cloud spaces, fluttering on the earth, every throe of the struggle making the snare cut deeper, and one hears the sharp, wild cry of pain and fear.

In my work in the fields I take wild birds into my hands more frequently than you would believe. Several times in a season I find a young female struggling on the ground, unable to deposit her first egg, from its unusual size; often a mother bird snares herself with a string or hair she has woven into her nest; many times an ill-chosen bathing-place weights a bird's feathers with crude oil past carrying. I know the throbbing pulsations of the captive wild bird-heart against my fingers, when it leaps and pumps, the sharp cries sound wholly unlike the usual bird-voice, and the tiny thing bites frantically at the hand that would give it life. This is the fear that is in the heart of the snared bird as it struggles, and then-thank gracious Heaven!-sometimes the snare is broken, and it escapes. Back among the tree-tops, fanning the air with free wing, who shall paint its exultant joy?

The tender heart of King David had been touched by this sight, and so when he saw his loved people walking into traps and snares set for them by the wicked, this comparison came to him, applicable as no other. When by personal effort and divine aid the snare was broken, and they escaped, well might David sing in exultation!

It was not always song. There were many times when David prayed poetry. Once, in pleading for the vindication of the righteous, he begged of the Almighty:

Keep me as the apple of the eye,

Hide me under the shadow of Thy wings,
From the wicked that spoil me,

My deadly enemies, that compass me about."

Another instance where he used the birds in comparison can be found in the Fifty-fifth Psalm, which in places is equally as great as the Twenty-third. In this Psalm of prayer there are to be found the basic lines of the song, "I will pray." Morning, noon, and evening, I will pray," runs one line. It contains, too, a couplet which has sustained faltering millions throughout ages since the days of David:

"Cast thy burden upon the Lord,

And He shall sustain thee."

In fact, it appeals to me that David furnished more lines that have been used as the foundation thought of exquisite songs and anthems, and more quotable poems which comfort the heart, than any other Bible writer. Of them all, save the Master Himself, to me David is the most lovable; so lovable that it is no marvel that the beauty of his heart and soul should tincture his work. I should like to begin with, "As the hart panteth after the water brooks," and review the lines of David, quoting all I know that have been used as the theme of appealing songs and anthems, but I must keep to my birds. The most exquisite reference of David is in this prayer :

"And I said, O that I had wings like a dove!
Then would I fly away and be at rest,

Lo, then would I wander far off,

I would lodge in the wilderness.

I would haste me to a shelter

From the stormy wind and tempest."

Only those who have felt the touch of the healing hand as they gazed upon loved faces stilled in the sleep of death while the singers chant softly, “O that I had wings like a dove!" know how to appreciate fully the great heart of King David.

He was great, too, when he extolled the Almighty in a kind of poetical appreciation, and twice in these instances he mentioned the birds. In the Eighth Psalm, when he praised the Almighty as King, and exalted man as His viceroy on earth, he cried:

"O Lord, our Lord,

How excellent is Thy name in all the earth!

Who has set Thy glory upon the heavens,

Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast Thou established strength,

Because of Thine adversaries,

That Thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger.

"When I consider the heavens, the work of Thy fingers, The moon and the stars, which Thou hast ordained; What is man that Thou art mindful of him?

Or the son of man, that Thou visitest him?

For Thou hast made him but little lower than God,

And crownest him with glory and honour.

Thou madest him to have dominion over the work of Thy hands; Thou hast put all things under his feet.

"All sheep and oxen,

Yea, and the beasts of the field;

The fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea;

Whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas.

"O Lord, our Lord,

How excellent is Thy name in all the earth!

"

Again, in what might be called a Festal Hymn, he mentioned feathered creatures in his poems of praise of the Almighty :

"Praise the Lord from the earth,
Ye dragons and all deeps:

Fire and hail, snow and vapour;
Stormy wind, fulfilling His word:

"Mountains and all hills;

There is a poetic outburst in Ecclesiastes, in which the birds are given a couplet that never has been surpassed, so that I will quote the whole of it :

"Remember also thy Creator in the days of thy youth; Or ever the evil days come,

And the years draw nigh,

When thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them: