Bird Song Yet ever and anon, a sigh Peers through her lavish mirth; For the lark's bold song is of the sky, By night and day, she tunes her lay, For bliss, alas! to-night must pass, And woe may come to-morrow. 1555 Hartley Coleridge [1796-1840] BIRD SONG THE robin sings of willow-buds, The pewee calls his little mate, The warbler sings, "What fun, what fun, To tilt upon the spray!" The cuckoo has no song, but clucks, Like any wooden toy; But the oriole, the oriole, The grosbeak sings the rose's birth, The wood-thrush sings of peace, "Sweet peace, Sweet peace," without alloy; But the oriole, the oriole, Sings "Joy! joy! joy!" Laura E. Richards [1850 THE SONG THE ORIOLE SINGS THERE is a bird that comes and sings I know his name, I know his note, O oriole, it is the song You sang me from the cottonwood, Too young to feel that I was young, Too glad to guess if life were good. And while I hark, before my door, As by the cottonwood it flowed. And on the bank that rises steep, And pours a thousand tiny rills, From death and absence laugh and leap My school-mates to their flutter-mills. The blackbirds jangle in the tops Below, the bridge-a noonday fear Of dust and shadow shot with sunStretches its gloom from pier to pier, Far unto alien coasts unknown. And on these alien coasts, above, Song: The Owl Ah, nothing, nothing! Commonest things: And all the rest belongs to death. Were some bright seraph sent from bliss With songs of heaven to win my soul From simple memories such as this, What could he tell to tempt my ear From you? What high thing could there be, So tenderly and sweetly dear As my lost boyhood is to me? William Dean Howells [1837 TO AN ORIOLE How falls it, oriole, thou hast come to fly At some glad moment was it nature's choice Or did some orange tulip, flaked with black, In some forgotten garden, ages back, Yearning toward Heaven until its wish was heard, Desire unspeakably to be a bird? 1557 Edgar Fawcett [1847-1904] SONG: THE OWL WHEN cats run home and light is come, And dew is cold upon the ground, And the far-off stream is dumb, And the whirring sail goes round, And the whirring sail goes round; Alone and warming his five wits, When merry milkmaids click the latch, And rarely smells the new-mown hay, And the cock hath sung beneath the thatch Twice or thrice his roundelay, Twice or thrice his roundelay; Alone and warming his five wits, The white owl in the belfry sits. Alfred Tennyson [1809-1892] SWEET SUFFOLK OWL SWEET Suffolk owl, so trimly dight Thy note that forth so freely rolls And sings a dirge for dying souls. "Te whit! Te whoo!" Thomas Vautor (fl. 1616] THE PEWEE THE listening Dryads hushed the woods; Their sun-embroidered, leafy hoods The lindens lifted to the blue: Only a little forest-brook The farthest hem of silence shook: When in the hollow shades I heard, Was it a spirit, or a bird? Or, strayed from Eden, desolate, Some Peri calling to her mate, Whom nevermore her mate would cheer? "Pe-ri! pe-ri! peer!" The Pewee Through rocky clefts the brooklet fell With plashy pour, that scarce was sound, A stillness fresh and audible: A yellow leaflet to the ground The owlet in his open door Stared roundly: while the breezes bore The plaint to far-off places drear,"Pe-ree! pe-ree! peer!" To trace it in its green retreat I sought among the boughs in vain; And followed still the wandering strain, So melancholy and so sweet The dim-eyed violets yearned with pain. 'Twas now a sorrow in the air, Some nymph's immortalized despair His plaintive pipe some fairy played, With long-drawn cadence thin and clear,"Pe-wee! pe-wee! peer!" Long-drawn and clear its closes were, As if the hand of Music through A thread of golden gossamer: 1559 |