Графични страници
PDF файл
ePub

Filling youths' and maidens' dreams
With mysterious, pleasing themes;
Then amid the sunlight clear
Floating in the fragrant air,

Thou dost fill each heart with pleasure
By thy glad ecstatic measure.

A single note, so sweet and low,
Like a full heart's overflow,

Forms the prelude; but the strain
Gives no such tone again,

For the wild and saucy song
Leaps and skips the notes among
With such quick and sportive play,
Ne'er was madder, merrier lay.

Gayest songster of the spring!
Thy melodies before me bring
Visions of some dream-built land
Where, by constant zephyrs fanned,
I might walk the livelong day,
Embosomed in perpetual May.
Nor care nor fear thy bosom knows
For thee a tempest never blows;
But when our Northern summer's o'er,
By Delaware's or Schuylkill's shore
The wild rice lifts its airy head,
And royal feasts for thee are spread.
And when the winter threatens there
Thy tireless wings yet own no fear,
But bear thee to more southern coasts,
Far beyond the reach of frosts.

Bob-o-link still may thy gladness
Take from me all taints of sadness:
Fill my soul with trust unshaken
In that Being who has taken
Care for every living thing

In summer, winter, fall, and spring.

THOMAS HILL.

BOB-O-LINK.

'NUFF said, June's bridesman, poet o' the year,
Gladness on wings, the bob-o-link is here;
Half hid in tip-top apple blooms he swings,
Or climbs against the breeze with quiverin' wings,
Or, givin' way to 't in a mock despair,

Runs down, a brook o' laughter, thru the air.

J. R. Lowell.

A SONG-SPARROW IN MARCH.

How much do the birds know, afloat in the air,
Of our changeable, strange human life and its care?
Who can tell what they utter,

With carol and flutter,

Of the joy of our hearts, or the pain hidden there?

In the March morning twilight I turned from a bed Where a soul had just risen from a form lying dead : The dim world was ringing

With a song-sparrow's singing

That went up and pierced the gray dawn overhead.

It rose like an ecstasy loosed from the earth;
Like a rapture repeating the song of its birth,

In that clear burst of gladness

Night shook off her sadness,

And death itself echoed the heavenly mirth.

While her sorrowful burden the sufferer laid by, The little bird passed, and caught up to the sky, meadow

And sang to gray

And mist wreath and shadow

The triumph a mortal had found it to die.

Oh, the birds cannot tell what it is that they sing!
But to me must the song-sparrow's melody bring,
Whenever I hear it,

The joy of a spirit

Released into life on that dim dawn of spring.

HEDGE-SPARROW.

LUCY LARCOM.

HEIGH-HO! daisies and buttercups!

Mother shall thread them a daisy chain;

Sing them a song of the pretty hedge-sparrow,

That loved her brown little ones, loved them full fain.

Sing, "Heart, thou art wide, though the house be but

narrow,"

Sing once, and sing it again.

JEAN INGELOW.

THE SING-AWAY BIRD.

HAVE you ever heard of the sing-away bird;

That sings where the Runaway River

Runs down with its rills from the bald-headed hills

That stand in the sunshine and shiver?

Oh, sing! sing-away! sing-away!

How the pines and the birches are stirred

By the trill of the sing-away bird!

And the bald-headed hills, with their rocks and their rills
To the tune of his rapture are ringing;
And their faces grow young, all the gray mists among,
While the forests break forth into singing.

Oh, sing! sing-away! sing-away!

And the river runs singing along ;

And the flying winds catch up the song.

"T was a white-throated sparrow that sped a light arrow Of song from his musical quiver,

And it pierced with its spell every valley and dell
On the banks of the Runaway River.

Oh, sing! sing-away! sing-away!

The song of the wild singer had
The sound of a song that is glad.

And, beneath the glad sun, every glad-hearted one
Sets the world to the tune of its gladness:
The swift rivers sing it, the wild breezes wing it,
Till earth loses thought of her sadness.

Oh, sing! sing-away! sing-away!
Oh, sing, happy soul, to joy's Giver, -
Sing on, by Time's Runaway River!

LUCY LARCOM.

WHAT THE SWALLOWS SAY.

HUNDREDS, hundreds of the race
Gather'd hold a high debate,

[blocks in formation]

"Smyrna suits my humbler needs,”
Says a second, twittering gay:
"Hadjis there count amber beads,
Sitting in the sun's bright ray."

"Balbec triglyph that I love!

Thee again," says one, "I seek; There shall I hang soon above Little ones with open beak."

One cries out: "Lo my address! Rhodes, the palace of the knights; Year by year my nest I tress

On the black-stone pillar heights."

Says a fifth: "Old age, you see, Weighs me down, I scarce can fly; Malta's terraced rock for me!

Azure wave and azure sky!

And the sixth: "In Cairo fair,
On a lofty minaret,

[ocr errors]

Mud headquarters lined with hair
Make me winter quite forget."

"At the Second Cataract,"

Says the last, "mid beauties brown,

Is my nest; the place exact

Is a granite monarch's crown."

All:

"To-morrow many miles

File by file we shall have gone ; Peaks of snow, and plains and isles,

Vanish far-yet on!- still on!"

« ПредишнаНапред »