[Poems by Thompson in] The union of American Poetry and Art A choice collection of Poems by American Poets |
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 | [Poems by Thompson in] The union of American Poetry and Art |  |
414
A GREEN HERON.
Where a bright creek into the river's side
Shoots its keen arrow, a green heron sits
Watching the sunfish as it gleaming flits
From sheen to shade. He sees the turtle glide
Through the clear spaces of the rhythmic stream
Like some weird fancy through a poet's dream;
He turns his golden eyes from side to side,
In very gladness that he is not dead,
While the swift wind-stream ripples overhead
And the creek's wavelets babble underneath!
Shoots its keen arrow, a green heron sits
Watching the sunfish as it gleaming flits
From sheen to shade. He sees the turtle glide
Through the clear spaces of the rhythmic stream
Like some weird fancy through a poet's dream;
He turns his golden eyes from side to side,
In very gladness that he is not dead,
While the swift wind-stream ripples overhead
And the creek's wavelets babble underneath!
O bird! that in a cheerful gloom dost live,
Thou art, to me, a type of happy death;
For when thou fliest away no mate will grieve
Because a lone, strange spirit vanisheth!
Thou art, to me, a type of happy death;
For when thou fliest away no mate will grieve
Because a lone, strange spirit vanisheth!
442
A PAWPAW.
In dusky groves, where cheerily all day long,Mocking the nut-hatch and the cardinal,
The trim drab cat-bird trolls its fitful song,
I hear the mellow golden pawpaws fall.
... What luscious fruit! scorned as of little worth
By those who long for guavas of the South,
Figs and bananas, pining that the North
Is barren of the luxuries of the earth!
Fruit that I sought in childhood with a mouth
Eager to taste thy wild delicious juice!
What orange grown in groves of Italy,
Or what pomegranate ripened in the dews
Of Grecian isles, would I not now refuse
For the rare-flavored, racy pulp of these?
390
AN OWL.
What art thou, say, a bird, or beast, or what?Leering from that old plane-tree's hollow stem!
Thine eyes have something criminal in them,
And thy hooked beak suggests a chilling thought
Of midnight murder of sweet sleeping things,
Dreaming with delicate heads beneath their wings,
And of thy hideous presence knowing not,
Till thou dost swoop! ... I scarce can look at thee
Without a shudder, thinking how of old,
In frightful dungeons far beyond the sea,
The heathen kings their prisoners would hold
For devilish wreaking of their cruelty,
And, while the beasts lapped human blood as wine,
Laughed in a husky, heartless voice, like thine!
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