THE SONGSTER.

ove the rainbow and the roar

long billow from the Afric shore?
ing other guerdon

e, than Heaven's light,

thy crested head aright,
melody's sweet burden
u dost proudly utter,
ny an ecstatic flutter
le of thy tawny throat
each delicious note.

hou a waif from Paradise,

ome fine moment wrought
rtist of the skies,

winged, cherubic Thought?

of the amber beak, of the golden wing! er is thy carolling ;

hast not far to seek bread, nor needest wine thine utterance divine; canopied and clothed unto Song betrothed!

ne aërial cage

thine ancient heritage;

no task-work on thee laid

hearse the ditties thou hast made;

hast a lordly store,

gh thou scatterest them free,

icher than before,

Iding in fee

domain of minstrelsy.

145

A VIOLET.

GOD does not send us strange flowers every year.
When the spring winds blow o'er the pleasant places,
The same dear things lift up the same fair faces.
The violet is here.

It all comes back: the odor, grace, and hue ;
Each sweet relation of its life repeated:
No blank is left, no looking-for is cheated;
It is the thing we knew.

So after the death-winter it must be.

God will not put strange signs in the heavenly places:
The old love shall look out from the old faces.

Veilchen! I shall have thee!

THE SONGSTER.

ADELINE D. T. WHITNEY.

A MIDSUMMER CAROL.

I.

WITHIN our summer hermitage

I have an aviary,—

'Tis but a little, rustic cage,

That holds a golden-winged Canary:

A bird with no companion of his kind.
But when the warm south wind

144

THE SONGSTER.

Blows, from rathe meadows, over

The honey-scented clover,

I hang him in the porch, that he may hear
The voices of the bobolink and thrush,

The robin's joyous gush,

The bluebird's warble, and the tunes of all
Glad matin songsters in the fields anear.
Then, as the blithe responses vary,

And rise anew, and fall,

In every hush

He answers them again,

With his own wild, reliant strain,

As if he breathed the air of sweet Canary.

II.

Bird, bird of the golden wing,
Thou lithe, melodious thing!

Where hast thy music found?
What fantasies of vale and vine,
Of glades where orchids intertwine,
Of palm-trees, garlanded and crowned,
And forests flooded deep with sound-
What high imagining

Hath made this carol thine?

By what instinct art thou bound
To all rare harmonies that be

In those green islands of the sea,
Where thy radiant, wildwood kin
Their madrigals at morn begin,