BLITHE new-comer! I have heard,
I hear thee and rejoice :
O cuckoo! shall I call thee bird,
Or but a wandering voice?
While I am lying on the grass
Thy twofold shout I hear;
From hill to hill it seems to pass,
At once far off and near.
Though babbling only to the vale
Of sunshine and of flowers,
Thou bringest unto me a tale
Of visionary hours.
Thrice welcome, darling of the spi
Even yet thou art to me
No bird. but an invisible thing
A voice, a mystery.
To seek thee did I often rove
Through woods and on the green;
And thou wert still a hope, a love;
Still longed for, never seen!
And I can listen to thee yet;
Can lie upon the plain
And listen, till I do beget
That golden time again.
IGH overhead the stripe-winged nightkawk
With loud responses to his distant love; And while the air for insects he explores, In frequent swoop descending from above, Startles, with whizzing sound, the fearful wight, Who wanders lonely in the silent night.
Around our heads the bat, on leathern wings,
In airy circles wheels his sudden flight;
The whippoorwill, in distant forest, sings
Her loud, unvaried song; and o'er the night
The boding owl, upon the evening gale,
Sends forth her wild and melancholy wail.
The first sweet hour of gentle evening flies,
On downy pinions to 'eternal rest;
Along the vale the balmy breezes rise,
Fanning the languid boughs; while in the west
The last faint streaks of daylight die away,
And night and silence close the summer day.
ALONZO LEWIS.
THE MOCKING BIRD CALLING HER MATE
throat! O trembling throat!
Sound clearer through the atmosphere!
Pierce the woods, the earth;
Somewhere listening to catch you, must be the one I want.
HE lark sings for joy in her own loved land,
In the furrowed field, by the breezes fanned;
And so revel we
In the furrowed sea,
As joyous and glad as the lark can be.
On the placid breast of the inland lake
The wild duck delights her pastime to take;
But the petrel braves
The wild ocean waves,
His wing in the foaming billow he laves.
The halcyon loves in the noontide beam
To follow his sport on the tranquil stream;
He fishes at ease
In the summer breeze,
But we go angling in stormiest seas.
No song-note have we but a piping cry,
Seekest 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 the way along that pathless coast.
The desert and illimitable air-
Lone wandering, but not lost.
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
That blends with the storm when the wind is high. Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given,
When the land-birds wail
We sport in the gale,
And merrily over the ocean we sail
ITHIN a thick and spreading hawthorn bush
That overhung a molehill large and
round,
I heard from morn to morn a merry thrush
Sing hymns of rapture, while I drank the sound
With joy-and oft an unintruding guest,
I watched her secret toils from day to day; How true she wraped the moss to form her nest, And modelled it within with wood and clay.
And by and by, like heath bells gilt with dew,
There lay her shining eggs as bright as flowers,
Ink-spotted over, shells of green and blue;
And there I witnessed, in the summer hours,
A brood of nature's minstrels chirp and fly,
Glad as the sunshine and the laughing sky.
HITHER, 'midst falling dew,
And shall not soon depart.
RAWN from his refuge in some lonely elm,
That age or injury has hollowed deep,
Where, on his bed of wool and matted leaves,
He has outslept the winter, ventures forth,
While glow the heavens with the last steps To frisk a while and bask in the warm sun,
of day,
Far, through the rosy depths, dost thou
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.
'HE schoolboy, wandering through the wood To pull the primrose gay,
Starts, the new voice of spring to hear,
And imitates the lay.
What time the pea puts on the bloom,
Thou fliest thy vocal vale,
An annual guest in other lands,
Another spring to hail.
Sweet bird! thy bower is ever green,
Thy sky is ever clear;
Thou hast no sorrow in thy song,
No winter in thy year!
O could I fly, I'd fly with thee!
We'd make, with joyful wing,
Our annual visit o'er the globe,
Companions of the spring.
N the cross-beam under the Old South bell,
The nest of a pigeon is builded well.
In summer and winter that bird is there,
Out and in with the morning air;
I love to see him track the street,
With his wary eye and active feet;
And I often watch him as he springs,
Circling the steeple with easy wings,
Till across the dial his shade has passed,
And the belfry edge is gained at last;
'T is a bird I love, with its brooding note,
And the trembling throb in its mottled throat;
There's a human look in its swelling breast,
And the gentle curve of its lowly crest;
And I often stop with the fear I feel-
He runs so close to the rapid wheel.
Whatever is rung on that noisy bell—
Chime of the hour, or funeral knell—
The dove in the belfry must hear it well.
When the tongue swings out to the midnight moon,
When the sexton cheerly rings for noon,
When the clock strikes clear at morning light,
When the child is waked with "nine at night,"
When the chimes play soft in the Sabbath air,
Filling the spirit with tones of prayer-
Whatever tale in the bell is heard,
He broods on his folded feet unstirred,
Or, rising half in his rounded nest,
He takes the time to smooth his breast,
Then drops again, with filmèd eyes,
And sleeps as the last vibration dies.
Sweet bird! I would that I could be
A hermit in the crowd like thee!
With wings to fly to wood and glen,
Thy lot, like mine, is cast to men;
And daily, with unwilling feet,
I tread, like thee, the crowded street,
But, unlike me, when day is o'er,
Thou canst dismiss the world, and soar;
Or, at a half-felt wish for rest,
Canst smooth the feathers on thy breast,
And drop, forgetful, to thy nest.
I would that in such wings of gold
I could my weary heart upfold;
I would I could look down unmoved
(Unloving as I am unloved),
And while the world throngs on beneath,
Smooth down my cares and calmly breathe;
And, never sad with others' sadness,
And, never glad with others' gladness,
Listen, unstirred, to knell or chime,
And, lapped in quiet, bide my time.
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IRD of the broad and sweeping wing,
Thy home is high in heaven,
Where wide the storms their banners fling,
And the tempest clouds are driven.
Thy throne is on the mountain top;
Thy fields, the boundless air;
And hoary peaks, that proudly prop
The skies, thy dwellings are.
Thou sittest like a thing of light,
Amid the noontide blaze:
The midway sun is clear and bright ;
It cannot dim thy gaze.
Thy pinions, to the rushing blast,
O'er the bursting billow, spread, Where the vessel plunges, hurry past,
Like an angel of the dead.
Thou art perched aloft on the beetling crag,
And the waves are white below,
And on, with a haste that cannot lag,
They rush in an endless flow.
Again thou hast plumed thy wing for flight
To lands beyond the sea,
And away, like a spirit wreathed in light,
Thou hurriest, wild and free.
Lord of the boundless realm of air,
In thy imperial name,
The heart of the bold and ardent dare
The dangerous path of fame.
Beneath the shade of thy golden wings,
The Roman legions bore,
From the river of Egypt's cloudy springs,
Their pride, to the polar shore.
And where was then thy fearless flight?
O'er the dark, mysterious sea,
To the lands that caught the setting light,
The cradle of liberty.
JAMES G. PERCIVAL.
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