 | The Last Crusade and Other Poems |  |
135
TO THE REDBREAST.
Minstrel of Autumn! when a sadder sunSwoons night by night along the weeping West,
When thrush and merle, their wealth of love-song spent,
Crouch shivering, each beside his ruined nest,
When, fluttering down, the dead leaves, one by one,
Whisper o'er dying flowers a slow lament,
Then thou, bright bird, the latest and the best,
Perched on the arm of some dismantled tree,
Dost utter from thy full and glowing breast
Such rapturous strains of happy minstrelsy,
That neither mouldering leaves nor sobbing skies
Can damp the faith in life that never dies.
| The Last Crusade and Other Poems | |