 | Poems at Home and Abroad |  |
44
The First Swallow
I heard the wheat-ear singing in the dale,
I saw the ouzel curtsey to the sun,
And cried, ‘The days of winter sure are done,
The spring upon the mountains doth prevail,
Soon shall the cuckoo come to tell her tale.’
E'en as I spake where Calder's ripples run
To seek the shining Solway, there came one
Songless but sweeter than the nightingale.
I saw the ouzel curtsey to the sun,
And cried, ‘The days of winter sure are done,
The spring upon the mountains doth prevail,
Soon shall the cuckoo come to tell her tale.’
E'en as I spake where Calder's ripples run
To seek the shining Solway, there came one
Songless but sweeter than the nightingale.
From silent wastes and those dumb Memphian hills
Where dead men slumber in Sakkarah's dunes,
He came, he could not speak our English tongue,
But as he flashed above the daffodils
On bluest April air he wrote in runes
That Love was near, and Life again was young.
Where dead men slumber in Sakkarah's dunes,
He came, he could not speak our English tongue,
But as he flashed above the daffodils
On bluest April air he wrote in runes
That Love was near, and Life again was young.
| Poems at Home and Abroad | |