Bright shower of lambent butterflies,
Soft cloud of murmuring bees,
O fragile storm of sighing leaves
Adrift upon the breeze !
Wild birds with eager wings outspread
To seek an alien sky.
Sweet comrades of a lyric spring.
My little songs, good-bye !
Evening, and all the birds
In a chorus of shimmering sound
Are easing their hearts of joy
For miles around.
The air is blue and sweet,
The few first stars are white,--
Oh let me like the birds
Sing before night.
I have no riches but my thoughts,
Yet these are wealth enough for me;
My thoughts of you are golden coins
Stamped in the mint of memory;
And I must spend them all in song,
For thoughts, as well as gold, must be
Left on the hither side of death
To gain their immortality.
I sang my songs for the rest,
For you I am still;
The tree of my song is bare
On its shining hill.
For you came like a lordly wind,
And the leaves were whirled
Far as forgotten things
Past the rim of the world.
The tree of my song stands bare
Against the blue--
I gave my songs to the rest,
Myself to you.
I heard a wood thrush in the dusk
Twirl three notes and make a star--
My heart that walked with bitterness
Came back from very far.
Three shining notes were all he had,
And yet they made a starry call--
I caught life back against my breast
And kissed it, scars and all.
I sang a song at dusking time
Beneath the evening star,
And Terence left his latest rhyme
To answer from afar.
Pierrot laid down his lute to weep,
And sighed, "She sings for me."
But Colin slept a careless sleep
Beneath an apple tree.
Brown-thrush singing all day long
In the leaves above me,
Take my love this April song,
"Love me, love me, love me!"
When he harkens what you say,
Bid him, lest he miss me,
Leave his work or leave his play,
And kiss me, kiss me, kiss me!
My heart cried like a beaten child
Ceaselessly all night long;
I had to take my own cries
And thread them into a song.
One was a cry at black midnight
And one when the first cock crew--
My heart was like a beaten child,
But no one ever knew.
Life, you have put me in your debt
And I must serve you long--
But oh, the debt is terrible
That must be paid in song.
It will not change now
After so many years;
Life has not broken it
With parting or tears;
Death will not alter it,
It will live on
In all my songs for you
When I am gone.
Like barley bending
In low fields by the sea,
Singing in hard wind
Ceaselessly;
Like barley bending
And rising again,
So would I, unbroken,
Rise from pain;
So would I softly,
Day long, night long,
Change my sorrow
Into song.
The dreams of my heart and my mind pass,
Nothing stays with me long,
But I have had from a child
The deep solace of song;
If that should ever leave me,
Let me find death and stay
With things whose tunes are played out and forgotten
Like the rain of yesterday.
In the silver light after a storm,
Under dripping boughs of bright new green,
I take the low path to hear the meadowlarks
Alone and high-hearted as if I were a queen.
What have I to fear in life or death
Who have known three things: the kiss in the night,
The white flying joy when a song is born,
And meadowlarks whistling in silver light.