WINGS AND SONG

I meant to do my work to-day— But a brown bird sang in the apple-tree And a butterfly flitted across the field, And all the leaves were calling me.

And the wind went sighing over the land, Tossing the grasses to and fro, And a rainbow held out its shining hand— So what could I do but laugh and go?

Through tree-top and clover a-whirr and away! Hi! little rover, stop and stay.

Merry, absurd, excited wag— Lilliput-bird in Brobdingnag!

Wild and free as the wild thrush, and warier— Was ever a bee merrier, airier?

Wings folded so, a second or two— Was ever a crow more solemn than you?

A-whirr again over the garden, away! Who calls, little rover, Bird or fay?

Agleam and aglow, incarnate bliss! What do you know that we humans miss?

In the lily's chalice, what rune, what spell, In the rose's palace, what do they tell

(When the door you bob in, airily) That they hush from the robin, hide from the bee?—

Fearing the crew of chatter and song, And tell to you of the chantless tongue?

Chantless! Ah, yes. Is that the sting Masked in gay dress and whirring wing?

Faith! But a wing of such airy stuff! What need to sing? Here's music enough.

A-whirr, and over tree-top, and through! Hi! little rover, fair travel to you.

Sweet, absurd, excited wag— Lilliput-bird in Brobdingnag!

Softly at dawn a whisper stole Down from the Green House on the Hill, Enchanting many a ghostly bole And wood song with the ancient thrill.

Gossiping on the countryside, Spring and the wandering breezes say God has thrown heaven open wide And let the thrushes out to-day.

At sunset my brown nightingales Hidden and hushed all day, Ring vespers, while the color pales And fades to twilight gray: The little mellow bells they ring, The little flutes they play, Are soft as though for practising The things they want to say. It's when the dark has floated down To hide and guard and fold, I know their throats that look so brown, Are really made of gold. No music I have ever heard Can call as sweet as they! I wonder if it is a bird That sings within the hidden tree, Or some shy angel calling me To follow far away?

Down from the sky on a sudden he drops Into the mullein and juniper tops, Flushed from his bath in the midsummer shine Flooding the meadowland, drunk with the wine Spilled from the urns of the blue, like a bold Sky-buccaneer in his sable and gold.

Lightly he sways on the pendulous stem, Vividly restless, a fluttering gem, Then with a flash of bewildering wings Dazzles away up and down, and he sings Clear as a bell at each dip as he flies Bounding along on the wave of the skies.

Sunlight and laughter, a wingèd desire, Motion and melody married to fire, Lighter than thistle-tuft borne on the wind, Frailer than violets, how shall we find Words that will match him, discover a name Meet for this marvel, this lyrical flame?

How shall we fashion a rhythm to wing with him, Find us a wonderful music to sing with him Fine as his rapture is, free as the rollicking Song that the harlequin drops in his frolicking Dance through the summer sky, singing so merrily High in the burning blue, winging so airily?

O, we are Kinfolk, she and I,— The little mother-bird all brown, Who broods above her nest on high, And with her soft, bright eyes looks down To read the secret of my heart,— We two from all the world apart!

She dreams there in her swaying nest; I dream here 'neath my sheltering vine. The same love stirs her feathered breast That makes my heart-throb seem divine. We both dream 'neath the same kind sky,— The small brown mother-bird, and I.

An arrow, feathery, alive, He darts and sings,— Then with a sudden skimming dive Of striped wings He finds a pine and, debonair, Makes with his mate All birds that ever rested there Articulate.

The whisper of a multitude Of happy wings Is round him, a returning brood, Each time he sings. Though heaven be not for them or him Yet he is wise, And daily tiptoes on the rim Of paradise.

Where snow-drifts are deepest he frolics along, A flicker of crimson, a chirrup of song, My Cardinal-Bird of the frost-powdered wing, Composing new lyrics to whistle in Spring.

A plump little prelate, the park is his church; The pulpit he loves is a cliff-sheltered birch; And there, in his rubicund livery dressed, Arranging his feathers and ruffling his crest,

He preaches, with most unconventional glee, A sermon addressed to the squirrels and me, Commending the wisdom of those that display The brightest of colors when heavens are gray.

The first faint dawn was flushing up the skies, When, dreamland still bewildering mine eyes, I looked out to the oak that, winter-long,— A winter wild with war and woe and wrong,— Beyond my casement had been void of song.

And lo! with golden buds the twigs were set, Live buds that warbled like a rivulet Beneath a veil of willows. Then I knew Those tiny voices, clear as drops of dew, Those flying daffodils that fleck the blue,

Those sparkling visitants from myrtle isles— Wee pilgrims of the sun, that measured miles Innumerable over land and sea With wings of shining inches. Flakes of glee, They filled that dark old oak with jubilee,

Foretelling in delicious roundelays Their dainty courtships on the dipping sprays, How they should fashion nests, mate helping mate, Of milkweed flax and fern-down delicate, To keep sky-tinted eggs inviolate.

Listening to those blithe notes, I slipped once more From lyric dawn through dreamland's open door, And there was God, Eternal Life that sings Eternal joy, brooding all mortal things, A nest of stars, beneath untroubled wings.

Out of the purple drifts, From the shadow sea of night, On tides of musk a moth uplifts Its weary wings of white.

Is it a dream or ghost Of a dream that comes to me, Here in the twilight on the coast, Blue cinctured by the sea?

Fashioned of foam and froth— And the dream is ended soon, And, lo, whence came the moon-white moth Comes now the moth-white moon!

The Puritan Spring Beauties stood freshly clad for church; A Thrush, white-breasted, o'er them sat singing on his perch. "Happy be! for fair are ye!" the gentle singer told them, But presently a buff-coat Bee came booming up to scold them. "Vanity, oh, vanity! Young maids, beware of vanity!" Grumbled out the buff-coat Bee, Half parson-like, half soldierly.

The sweet-faced maidens trembled, with pretty, pinky blushes, Convinced that it was wicked to listen to the Thrushes; And when, that shady afternoon, I chanced that way to pass, They hung their little bonnets down and looked into the grass. All because the buff-coat Bee Lectured them so solemnly:— "Vanity, oh, vanity! Young maids, beware of vanity!"

He didn't know much music When first he come along; An' all the birds went wonderin' Why he didn't sing a song.

They primped their feathers in the sun, An' sung their sweetest notes; An' music jest come on the run From all their purty throats!

But still that bird was silent In summer time an' fall; He jest set still and listened, An' he wouldn't sing at all!

But one night when them songsters Was tired out an' still, An' the wind sighed down the valley An' went creepin' up the hill;

When the stars was all a-tremble In the dreamin' fields o' blue, An' the daisy in the darkness— Felt the fallin' o' the dew,—

There come a sound o' melody No mortal ever heard, An' all the birds seemed singin' From the throat o' one sweet bird!

Then the other birds went Mayin' In a land too fur to call; For there warn't no use in stayin' When one bird could sing for all!

Bee! tell me whence do you come? Ten fields away, twenty perhaps, Have heard your hum.

If you are from the north, you may Have passed my mother's roof of straw Upon your way.

If you came from the south you should Have seen another cottage just Inside the wood.

And should you go back that way, please Carry a message to the house Among the trees.

Say—I will wait her at the rock Beside the stream, this very night At eight o'clock.

And ask your queen when you get home To send my queen the present of A honey-comb.

Fireflies, Fireflies, little glinting creatures, Making night lovely with a rain of gold, Born of the moonbeams, children all unearthly, Ah how you vanish from a look too bold!

Fireflies, Fireflies, lovely as our dreams are, Sewn with such fancies from the years gone by, Wayward, elusive, as the playful zephyrs, Hiding mid grasses, gleaming in the sky.

Fireflies, Fireflies, like unto the silent Brown nuns who gather for the dead to pray, As theirs your mission; holy, too, your tapers, Souls of dead flowers lighting on their way.

Fireflies flicker in the tops of trees, Flicker in the lower branches, Skim along the ground. Over the moon-white lilies Is a flashing and ceasing of small, lemon-green stars. As you lean against me, Moon-white, The air all about you Is slit, and pricked, and pointed with sparkles of lemon-green flame Starting out of a background of great vague trees.

She passed through the shadowy garden, so tall and so white, Her eyes on the stars and her face like an angel's upturned, And it seemed to my thought that the dusk round her head with the light Of an aureole burned.

But where she had trodden unseeing, I found on the path A cricket, so frail that her light foot had maimed it, yet strong To valiantly pipe, tiny hero, a faint aftermath Of its yesterday song.

And I whispered, "Alas, Little Brother, why must it befall That the passing of angels but cripples and leaves us to die? Poor imp of the greensward, God trumpets me clear in thy call; Thou art braver than I.

"The Bright Ones of Heaven have trodden me down as they passed; I crawl in their footsteps a trampled and impotent thing. I know not the reason, nor question henceforth. To the last, While I live, I will sing."

Now with a re-created mind Back to the world my way I find;

Fed by the hills one little hour, By meadow-slope and beechen-bower,

Cedar serene, benignant larch, Hoar mountains and the azure arch

Where dazzling vapors make vast sport In God's profound and spacious court.

The universe played with me. Earth Harped to high heaven her sweetest mirth;

The clouds built castles for my pleasure, And airy legions without measure

Flung, spindrift-wise, across the sky To thrill my heart once and to die.

I have held converse with large things; For cherubim with cooling wings

Brushed me, and gay stars, hid from view, Called through the arras of the blue

And clapped their hands: "These veils uproll! And see the comrades of your soul!"

The very flowers that ringed my bed Their little "God-be-with-you" said,

And every insect, bird and bee Brought cool cups from eternity.

It is half-past eight on the blossomy bush: The petals are spread for a sunning; The little gold fly is scrubbing his face; The spider is nervously running To fasten a thread; the night-going moth Is folding his velvet perfection; And presently over the clover will come The bee on a tour of inspection.

My night-moth, my white moth, out of the fragrant dark Blowing in and growing like a dim star-spark, So swift in the shifting of your elfin wings, So slight in your lighting, as a flower that clings, As a boat to ride the dew, with sheer up-bearing sails, Pulsing and breathing, rocked with delicate gales,— You gleam as a dream, by my window's light, My white moth, my bright moth, my wandering wraith of night.

From the velvet screening of a great gray cloud The moon floats swiftly, white and open-browed, Flooding cloud and water with her shining trail, Till the night shrinks, sighing, behind the radiant veil; The night, with her shy soul, to the deep wood slips— Her shy soul, her high soul, shrine of all the stars; And you fly, like the sigh from her tender lips, Athwart the wavering shadows, beating the silver bars; You fleet in the meeting of the dark and bright, My light moth, my white moth, spark from the soul of night.

O winged brother on the harebell, stay— Was God's hand very pitiful, the hand That wrought thy beauty at a dream's demand? Yes, knowing I love so well the flowery way, He did not fling me to the world astray— He did not drop me to the weary sand, But bore me gently to a leafy land: Tinting my wings, He gave me to the day.

Oh, chide no more my doubting, my despair! I will go back now to the world of men. Farewell, I leave thee to the world of air, Yet thou hast girded up my heart again; For He that framed the impenetrable plan, And keeps His word with thee, will keep with man.

O, little bird, you sing As if all months were June; Pray tell me ere you go The secret of your tune?

"I have no hidden word To tell, nor mystic art; I only know I sing The song within my heart!"