The Broken Pinion

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 Christ-like 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 the 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.

--Hezekiah Butterworth, 1839-1905