University of Virginia Library

A voice of comfort to a dreary world
Is thine, red-breasted warbler. Thro' long months,
To glade, and upland ridge, and wood-path wild,
My foot-prints have been strangers: olden haunts
By tones of discord have been visited—
The loud, hoarse clarion of the trooping storm;
Hail rattling on sere leaves and frozen mould,
Like gravel on the coffins of the dead;
Wild moanings of the leafless, swaying boughs,
Like creatures racked with keen, contorting pangs,
The clink of icy spears by Winter hung,
His cold war-weapons, on the frosted trees—
These are drear sounds in places that we loved
In the gay moon of flowers, or autumn time,
When groves were gorgeous with prismatic dyes.

But thou hast come at last, melodious bird!
From orange-arbors in the southern land,
To light the dimmed horizon of my heart,
And purge my spirit of its melancholy;
For in thy strain, with joy articulate,
There is a cordial for a bosom sad—
A medicine for low, complaining moans.
And will thy prophecies of golden hours,
Green lawns, bright blossoms, and rejoicing rills
Prove, like the visions of my youth, untrue?
Oh, no! winged messenger of hope and love!
Unerring instinct prompts thy gifted tongue,
In carol clear, a truthful tale to tell.
Oh, what a lesson might the wayward bard,
Who prostitutes his dower of Genius rare,
By masking falsehood in mellifluous rhyme,
And decking sin with rosy coronal,
Forerunner of mild weather, learn from thee!

Companioned by thee I will sit once more
Far in the shadowy depths of forest old—
In mossed, sequestered nooks of other years—
Beneath a canopy more rich than king,
Crowned and anointed, boasts—though cunning hands
To lull his soul, touch dulcet instruments:
Nor will I lack rich minstrelsy to calm
Unquiet throbbings of a fevered pulse.
There will the timorous partridge beat his drum;
Perched on dark stump in meadow near, the quail
Whistle a signal to her ambushed brood;
There insect tribes will blow their pipes so shrill;
Low, droning bugles will the bee-swarm wind;
Wreathed leaf-harps will be fingered by the winds:
There will thy chant, plumed harmonist, be heard
In the blithe, general concert of the grove,
While passing crane, with slender neck outstretched,
Of that wild band will be the trumpeter.
The water-fall will shake its silver bells,
Timed to a lively and tumultuous air;
A gurgling laugh will ring in lapsing brooks,
As if young Naiads, on their pebbly floors,
Were treading, in their mirth, a measure light.
Changes—some mournful and some glad—have passed
Around me since November drove thee forth
To find a refuge in a warmer clime.
My little daughter, then too young to mark
The mellow cadence of thine evening lay,
Or quick pulsations of thy swelling throat,
Or thy wings' rise and fall abrupt in flight,
Now makes a trial of her strength to leap
From her fond father's arms, when near my door
Thy song in honor of victorious Spring,
Knocking frost fetters from the streams, is heard
And I will teach her with enamored gaze
To look on thy round nest, contrived with skill,
And think, the while, of earth's great Architect:
And I will teach my blue-eyed one to love
Thy callow younglings, sinless as herself,
And white crumbs scatter for the mother nigh,
And with pure thoughts her budding mind inform
By frequent strolls through woods and pastures green.

Alas! a few who heard thy sad farewell
Die on the wild, autumnal blast, away
Have gone to early graves.
Will not thy strain
In the drear church-yard, white with lettered stones,
For them breathe sorrowing? As yet the clods
That roof their lowly mansions have put forth
Nor pleasant herb, nor blade of sighing grass;
But thy return gives promise to bruised hearts
That flowers ere long will grace their sepulchres
Types of eternal summer, in a land
That lies beyond death's dark and wintry caves.