Joy-Month

"Here again, here, here, here, happy year!"

O warble unchidden, unbidden!
Summer is coming, is coming, my dear,

And all the winters are hidden.

1533

Of mist and sunshine mingled, moves the strain
O'er hill and plain.

Strong

As love, O Song,

In flame or torrent sweep through Life along,

O'er grief and wrong.

John Banister Tabb [1845-1909]

JOY-MONTH

Oн, hark to the brown thrush! hear how he sings!
How he pours the dear pain of his gladness!
What a gush! and from out what golden springs!
What a rage of how sweet madness!

And golden the buttercup blooms by the way,
A song of the joyous ground;

While the melody rained from yonder spray
Is a blossom in fields of sound..

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?

Vainly the fowler's eye

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 [1833-1913]