 | Birds, Bees and Blossoms |  |
34
THE BITTERN.
I own I'm a most unsociable fellow,And that, like a bull cutting his teeth, I oft bellow.
The villagers tremble to hear my deep boom,
When the marsh and the fen are buried in gloom.
I know I have not the most musical voice,
But that was a matter in which I'd no choice;
And you need not any telling, of course,
That wading in rivers will make a bird hoarse.
I stand by the reeds near the river's green brink,
For hours by myself, and have a good think.
What do I think about? oh, many things,
But most of the changes that moving Time brings.
I think of the Bitterns that have gone before,
And of the deeds done by that old river shore;
For I belong to as ancient a race
As any you'll find in that reedy place.
Before England's green fields were fenced in with a hedge,
My ancestors boomed in the wild marshy sedge;
When nothing was seen but wood, mere, and wold,
And the roused bison bellowed in those forests old,
When the bear growled all day, and at night the wolf howled.
Then there was no man alive to affright,
No fire to redden the darksome midnight.
Rocked to sleep by the lapping of waves on the shore,
We were not then woke by the railway's deep roar.
Before Stonehenge was built, or before human sound
Had startled this island, we on it were found;
Ay, ages before the mailed Romans came,
Ere the white cliffs resounded with proud Cæsar's name;
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And with golden hooks cut down the gray mistletoe.
I think of these things while I look on the ground—
Think the time will soon come when there will not be found
A Bittern alive if you search England round.
For I know I am nearly the last of my race,
And that few will be found to fill up my place,
And that soon there will be neither vestige nor trace
Of the Bitterns that boomed through long thousands of years.
Do please lend me something to dry up my tears.
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