Records and Other Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

But hearken! the Daws fly over the town,
Some clear, sharp, airy notes come down;
And they switch away, with arouse! arouse!
Come and enjoy the Sabbath morning.

Soon, soon in the open street I stand:
God's silence lies o'er all the land—
Silence and beauty everywhere—
In those unfathomable skies,
And in the city as it lies
In folds of soft and sunny air.

The morn has lit the golden vanes,
The sun burns in the eastern panes,
The smoke of newly-kindled fires
Hangs blue about the gleaming spires.
The city's roar is hush'd, the humming
Country to the city coming.
A mild low bleat runs through the street

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From some far-off upland farm;
The cottar's cow lows in the croft,
Our dingy lanes repeat the charm.

Sweetly on Sabbath morning speak
Things unheard through all the week:—
The swallows, chittering on the eave
A fluttering ditty e'er they leave
In ecstasy, the air to cleave;
The house-top sparrows in the street,
Chirping among passing feet;
Unfelt winds singing in the tree
Almost imagined melody:
The gray-fly buzzing on the wall,—
And many voices, sweet and small;—
But the Daws are lords of all.

Where the morning smoke is curling,
And becoming viewless air,
See the merry black-coats whirling—
What a heaven of joy is there!
Not a single drop of care!

Cawing o'er the blacken'd tower,
Cawing round the gleaming spire;
I have watch'd them many an hour,
And my heart would never tire
A-list'ning that discordant quire:—
Discordant! No; the rudest note,
The simplest strain from Nature's throat,

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Has its own chord, all full and clear,
Deep within the spirit's ear.

Ah, whither wouldst thou, fervid spirit,
Panting through thy day of strife?
The universe thou dost inherit,
And eternal life.
The very winds, the skies that shine
In glory yonder, all are thine;
Thine by that mysterious law
That strikes a chord almost divine
Between thee and the worthless Daw.

Chased by the phantoms, Ambition and Death,
Slacken thy pace and take thy breath;
Tarry, and let them go by;
And know, for as much as they seem to claim,
Ambition will surely miss his aim,
And Death as surely die.

Unbend thy brow from thoughts of pelf;
It is a dream, and abides no waking:
Thy greatest treasures are thyself,
And Beauty and Truth, that wait thy taking.—
For, after all the toil and pain,
And coffers fill'd, where is the gain?
The beauty of my lord's domain
Makes me its lord. The city lying
In a golden lair of morning air,
With those black wings above it flying,

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Is trulier mine than his that draws
The rents, but does not know the Daws.

Cast off all fears of a dismal day
When Death shall reduce thee to senseless clay.
The earth can only take its own,
And death is but a sculptured stone.
But man is link'd, by living thought,
With God and the great eternities;
He is unending as the skies,
And needs not fear for aught.

Then what need'st thou but largely live
All thoughts and things that from the Giver
Issue through the great For-ever?
O, there is time to work and pause—
Good time for all, yea, even to give
A Sabbath morning to the Daws.