How glisten the eyes of the happy leaves!
How whispers each blade, “I am blest!”
Rosy Heaven his lips to flowered earth gives,
With the costliest bliss of his breast.

Pour, pour of the wine of thy heart, O Nature!
By cups of field and of sky,

By the brimming soul of every creature!—
Joy-mad, dear Mother, am I.

Tongues, tongues for my joy, for my joy! more tongues!— Oh, thanks to the thrush on the tree,

To the sky, and to all earth's blooms and songs!

They utter the heart in me.

David Atwood Wasson [1823-1887]

MY THRUSH

ALL through the sultry hours of June,
From morning blithe to golden noon,
And till the star of evening climbs
The gray-blue East, a world too soon,
There sings a Thrush amid the limes.

God's poet, hid in foliage green,
Sings endless songs, himself unseen;

Right seldom come his silent times.
Linger, ye summer hours serene!

Sing on, dear Thrush, amid the limes!

Nor from these confines wander out,
Where the old gun, bucolic lout,

Commits all day his murderous crimes:
Though cherries ripe are sweet, no doubt,
Sweeter thy song amid the limes.

May I not dream God sends thee there,
Thou mellow angel of the air,

Even to rebuke my earthlier rhymes
With music's soul, all praise and prayer?
Is that thy lesson in the limes?

"Blow Softly, Thrush "

Closer to God art thou than I:

His minstrel thou, whose brown wings fly

Through silent ether's summer climes.

Ah, never may thy music die!

Sing on, dear Thrush, amid the limes!

1535

Mortimer Collins [1827-1876]

THE HERMIT THRUSH

SWEET Singer, in the high and holy place
Of this dim-lit cathedral of the hills;
With reverent brow and unuplifted face,
I quaff the cup thy melody distills!

What sparkling well of limpid music springs

Within thy breast, to quench my thirst like this! What nameless chords are hid beneath thy wings, That all my soul is lifted by thy bliss!

Perchance the same mysterious desire

Hath brought us both to this deep shrine as one;

For now-it burns a single flame of fire,

Dropped through the branches from the setting sun!

And as thou singest, lo, the voice is mine,

Each note, a thought; each thought, a silent prayer,

Of joy, of peace-of ecstasy divine,

Poured forth upon the fragrant woodland air!

And I, who stand apart, am not alone,

Here, in these great cathedral aisles untrod;

O, Hermit, thou hast opened Heaven, unknown,
And through thy song have I communed with God.
Augustus Wight Bomberger [18

"BLOW SOFTLY, THRUSH"

BLOW softly, thrush, upon the hush
That makes the least leaf loud,
Blow, wild of heart, remote, apart

From all the vocal crowd,

Apart, remote, a spirit note
That dances meltingly afloat,
Blow faintly, thrush!

And build the green-hid waterfall

I hated for its beauty, and all

The unloved vernal rapture and flush,
The old forgotten lonely time,

Delicate thrush!

Spring's at the prime, the world's in chime,

And my love is listening nearly;

O lightly blow the ancient woe,

Flute of the wood, blow clearly!

Blow, she is here, and the world all dear,

Melting flute of the hush,

Old sorrow estranged, enriched, sea-changed,

Breathe it, veery thrush!

Joseph Russell Taylor [1868

TO A WATERFOWL

WHITHER, midst falling dew,

While glow the heavens with the last steps of day, Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue

Thy solitary way?

Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong, As, darkly painted on the crimson sky,

Thy figure floats along.

Seek'st thou the plashy brink

Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide,
Or where the rocking billows rise and sink
On the chafed ocean-side?

There is a Power whose care

Teaches thy way along that pathless coast,-
The desert and illimitable air,-

Lone wandering, but not lost.

The Wood-Dove's Note

All day thy wings have fanned

At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere,
Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land,
Though the dark night is near.

And soon that toil shall end;

Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest,
And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bend,
Soon, o'er thy sheltered nest.

Thou'rt gone, the abyss of heaven
Hath swallowed up thy form; yet, on my heart
Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given,
And shall not soon depart.

He who, from zone to zone,

1537

Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,
In the long way that I must tread alone,

Will lead my steps aright.

William Cullen Bryant [1794-1878]

THE WOOD-DOVE'S NOTE

MEADOWS with yellow cowslips all aglow,
Glory of sunshine on the uplands bare,
And faint and far, with sweet elusive flow,
The Wood-dove's plaintive call,

"O where! where! where !"

Straight with old Omar in the almond grove
From whitening boughs I breathe the odors rare
And hear the princess mourning for her love
With sad unwearied plaint,

"O where! where! where !"

New madrigals in each soft pulsing throat—
New life upleaping to the brooding air-
Still the heart answers to that questing note,
"Soul of the vanished years,

O where! where ! where !"
Emily Huntington Miller [1833-

THE SEA

SONG FOR ALL SEAS, ALL SHIPS

I

TO-DAY a rude brief recitative,

Of ships sailing the seas, each with its special flag or shipsignal,

Of unnamed heroes in the ships-of waves spreading and spreading far as the eye can reach,

Of dashing spray, and the winds piping and blowing,
And out of these a chant for the sailors of all nations,

Fitful, like a surge.

Of sea-captains young or old, and the mates, and of all intrepid sailors,

Of the few, very choice, taciturn, whom fate can never surprise nor death dismay,

Picked sparingly without noise by thee, old ocean, chosen by thee,

Thou sea that pickest and cullest the race in time, and unit

est nations,

Suckled by thee, old husky nurse, embodying thee,

Indomitable, untamed as thee.

(Ever the heroes on water or on land, by ones or twos appearing,

Ever the stock preserved and never lost, though rare, enough for seed preserved.)

II

Flaunt out, O sea, your separate flags of nations!
Flaunt out visible as ever the various ship-signals!

But do you reserve especially for yourself and for the soul of man one flag above all the rest,

A spiritual woven signal for all nations, emblem of man elate above death,