Part 3 — TO AN ORIOLE
Reading edition
How falls it, oriole, thou hast come to fly In tropic splendor through our Northern sky?
At some glad moment was it nature's choice To dower a scrap of sunset with a voice?
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?
Edgar Fawcett [1847-1904]