Book 2 — TO A CANARY BIRD.

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BY WILLIAM GIBSON, U. S. NAVY.

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Sweet little faery bird,

Gentle Canary bird,

Beats not thy tiny breast with one regret?

Is it enough for thee

Ever, as now, to be

Caged as a prisoner, kissed as a pet?

Gay is thy golden wing,

Careless thy caroling,

Thou art as happy as happy can be;

Singing so merrily,

Hast thou no memory

Of thy lost native isle o’er the sea?

Not the Hesperides,

Floating on fabled seas,

Nothing in Nature, and nothing in song,

Match with the magic smile,

Which, from thine own sweet isle,

Hushes the heaving wave all the year long.

Summer and youthful Spring,

Blooming and blossoming,

Hand-in-hand, sister-like, stray thro’ the clime;

There thou wert born, amid

Fruits colored like thee, hid

In the green groves of the orange and lime.

Then was the silver lute

Of the young maiden mute,

When, from the shade of her own cottage-eaves,

Rang first thy joyous trill,

While, with a gentle thrill,

Tho’ the breeze stirred them not, shivered the leaves.

Thou, like a spirit, come

From thy far island-home,

Seemest of spring-time and sunshine the voice.

Light-hearted is thy lay,

As, on the lemon spray,

Love, little singing bird, made thee rejoice.

For, from thy lady’s lip,

Oft is it thine to sip

Sweetness which dwells not in fruit or in flower;

And when her shaded eye

Rests on thee pensively,

Moonlight was ne’er so soft silv’ring thy bower.

Likest to thee is Love,

Never it cares to rove,

When its wild winglets feel Beauty’s control.

Would, little bird, that I

Might to thine island fly,

All, all alone with the girl of my soul!

There should’st thou sing to us,

Tender and tremulous,

Our hearts happy with love unexpressed.

Sweet little faery bird,

Gentle Canary bird,

How would’st thou be by that dear girl caressed.