There is music in the strong
Deep-throated bush,
Whisperings of song
Heard in the leaves' hush--
Ballads of the trees
In tongues unknown--
A reminiscent tone
On minor keys...
Boughs swaying to and fro
Though no winds pass...
Faint odors in the grass
Where no flowers grow,
And flutterings of wings
And faint first notes,
Once babbled on the boughs
Of faded springs.
Here in the shade of the tree
The hours go by
Silent and swift,
Lightly as birds fly.
Then the deep clouds broaden and drift,
Or the cloudless darkness and the worn moon.
Waking, the dreamer knows he is old,
And the day that he dreamed was gone
Is gone.
Gray were the rushes
Beside the budless bushes,
Green-patched the pond.
The lark had left soaring
Though yet the sun was pouring
His gold here and beyond.
Bramble-branches held me,
But had they not compelled me
Yet had I lingered there
Hearing the frogs and then
Watching the water-hen
That stared back at my stare.
There amid the bushes
Were blackbird's nests and thrush's,
Soon to be hidden
In leaves on green leaves thickening,
The birds return,
The blossom brightens again the cherry bough.
The hedges are green again
In the airless lane,
And hedge and blossom and bird call, Now, now, now!
O birds, return!
Who will care if the blossom die on the bough,
Or the hedge be bare again
In the screaming lane?
For what they were these are not, are not now.
The one gone makes
All that remain seem strange and lonely now.
She will not walk here again
In the blossoming lane:--
And there's a dead bough in every blossoming bough.
When we go wandering the wide air’s blue spaces,
Bare, unhappy, exiled souls of men;
How will our thoughts over and over again
Return to Earth’s familiar lovely places,
Where light with shadow ever interlaces--
No blanks of blue, nor ways beyond man’s ken--
Where birds are, and flowers, as violet, and wren,
Blackbird, bluebell, hedge-sparrow, tiny daisies.
O tiny things, but very stuff of soul
To us ... so frail.... Remember what we are;
Set us not on some strange outlandish star,
But one caring for Love. Give us a Home.
There we may wait while the long ages roll
Content, unfrightened by vast Time-to-come.
Poet, sing me a song to-day !
But the world grows old and my hair is gray.
Ah no ! there are birds on the lilac bushes
And a snow-drop out of the wet earth pushes.
Two chattering robins are planning a marriage,
And see ! there's a baby all pink in its carriage !
And the sun is wiping the clouds from his brow,
And who can look back when it's always now?
Oh, what is the use of a poet, say,
If he will not sing me a song to-day?
She is so wee,
So wise and dear
Her eyes can see,
Her ears can hear,
The flowers that grow
Below the snow,
The birds that peep
In their eggs asleep,
The songs we sing her
No other has heard,
The love we bring her
With never a word.
Gray birds of passage from another sky
Are those long hours I sit and wait for you;
Borne by strong wings across the sunlit blue
They go--dark flecks of shadow drifting by.
Sometimes they bring a song--a joyful cry,
As morn and eve your coming used to do;
But sometimes plaintive notes of sorrow too,
Amid the joyful echoes wail and die.
Then as I watch the beating of the wings
That seek a haven by far northern lakes,
And catch the note of some bird-heart that sings,
Or hear the plaintive cry of one that breaks,
I turn once more to half-forgotten things,
And the old longing in my heart awakes.
I lie beneath a dark green pine
Where sunbeams scarcely ever shine,
And if I'm still as still can be
Shy forest birds come down to me.
Brown thrushes run along the ground,
Goldfinches flit without a sound,
And humming-birds with ruby throats
Alight to smooth their emerald coats.
And when some day alone I lie
Beneath the ever-changing sky,
I'm glad to know the birds will come
To welcome me to my new home.
For I will lie so still that they
Will linger by me all the day,
And lulled at evening by their song
I shall not find the darkness long.
Still are the meadowlands, and still
Ripens the upland corn,
And over the brown gradual hill
The moon has dipped a horn.
The voices of the dear unknown
With silent hearts now call,
My rose of youth is overblown
And trembles to the fall.
My song forsakes me like the birds
That leave the rain and grey,
I hear the music of the words
My lute can never say.
I saw night leave her halos down
On Mitylene's dark mountain isle,
The silhouette of one fair town
Like broken shadows in a pile.
And in the farther dawn I heard
The music of a foreign bird.
In fields of shady angles now
I stand and dream in the half dark:
The thrush is on the blossomed bough,
Above the echoes sings the lark,
And little rivers drop between
Hills fairer than dark Mitylene.
Yet something calls me with no voice
And wakes sweet echoes in my mind;
In the fair country of my choice
Nor Peace nor Love again I find,
God made my mother on an April day,
From sorrow and the mist along the sea,
Lost birds' and wanderers' songs and ocean spray
And the moon loved her wandering jealously.
Beside the ocean's din she combed her hair,
Singing the nocturne of the passing ships,
Before her earthly lover found her there
And kissed away the music from her lips.
She came unto the hills and saw the change
That brings the swallow and the geese in turns.
But there was not a grief she deeméd strange,
For there is that in her which always mourns.
Kind heart she has for all on hill or wave
Whose hopes grew wings like ants to fly away.
I bless the God Who such a mother gave
This poor bird-hearted singer of a day.