Bird Sent by Providence

A poor man stood beside his door,
His sad fate for to deplore,
For landlord’s heart would not relent,
And seized his furniture for rent.

He hears song sweet as from fairy,
And soon he sees a canary,
Into his cage it did alight
And poured forth notes sweet and bright.

But owner of the bird did mourn,
And sadly longed for its return,
Without it she found no delight,
So she did landlord’s bill requite.

The poor man thinks the bird was sent
By the Lord to pay up his rent,
And he now stout maintains from thence
That there is a kind Providence.

Where this text comes from

First published in Poems of James McIntyre (1889). First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established. [1]

Structure read from the source's markup; the words have not been compared against a page scan. Last checked 2026-08-20.

Taken from Standard Ebooks, standardebooks/james-mcintyre_poetry, poetry.xhtml. Rights: public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931).

Earlier sources (3)

This poem as JSON or plain text. Line anchors #L1–#L16.

Cite this poem

James McIntyre (1828?–1906). “Bird Sent by Providence.” First published in Poems of James McIntyre (1889). Text: Poem Index, https://poemindex.org/james-mcintyre/bird-sent-by-providence/. Append #L14 to cite line 14, or #L4-L9 for lines 4–9.

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