The Flight Of The Wild Geese

Out of the sky they call to me Honking geese in the far flung V Of an angle traced on the filmy skies As they float along, and their plaintive cries Are the pipes of an elfin roundelay. Tis the call of the wild to the Far-away! “Northward Ho!” is their haunting chant Down the rocking winds their long lines slant, And the old gray gander who takes command How he marshals the files of his climbing band, As they wing their flight with a tireless haste, To the ice rimmed seas and the tundra waste. To the spruce fringed lakes and the virgin sod Where never the foot of man has trod; To the empty lands unspoiled and clean That never the eye of man has seen; Where the frost wraiths flee in the melting nights That throb to the dance of the northern lights. On their venturous voyage no compass guides Through the murmuring reefs and the chartless tides Of the upper air. But their leader hoarse, Like a pilot sage directs their course To the sheltered fens and the coves they share With the snow white fox and the arctic hare. How we follow the wild geese’s homing flight Till their chorus dies and they fade from sight, And our pulses thrill to be up and away Joyously buoyant, as free as they. For their far off challenge seems to ring “Awake, glad world, to the songs of Spring!”