Filling youths' and maidens' dreams Thou dost fill each heart with pleasure A single note, so sweet and low, Forms the prelude; but the strain For the wild and saucy song Gayest songster of the spring! Bob-o-link still may thy gladness In summer, winter, fall, and spring. THOMAS HILL. BOB-O-LINK. 'NUFF said, June's bridesman, poet o' the year, 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, 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; 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! 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 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 Oh, sing! sing-away! sing-away! The song of the wild singer had And, beneath the glad sun, every glad-hearted one Oh, sing! sing-away! sing-away! LUCY LARCOM. WHAT THE SWALLOWS SAY. HUNDREDS, hundreds of the race "Smyrna suits my humbler needs,” "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, Mud headquarters lined with hair "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!" |