University of Virginia Library

SONGS OF MY LIFE

I sang a song of the Lark,—yet not for life;
I sang a song of the Swan,—yet not for death;
I sang a song of the Bird of Paradise,
Mysterious, out of unknown groves of palm;
Yet through the open gate I have not passed.
I sang a song of the Swallow, faring forth;
And yet it was not I, but thou, my Son,
That fled thro' a night of tempests from the North
Into eternal summer and the Sun.
And yet again I sang a low sad song,
A note monotonous of loss and pain,
A song of mourning, like a Dove's, that moans,
And may not spread its wings and be at rest.
And in a desolate and moonless night
Once more I heard a voice that was my own,
'Twixt sky and earth, like souls in agony.
And now that all seems done, and life stands still,
I, erstwhile crowned with fruit and flower at once
Amid the orange grove, look to my fields
Of harvest; and behold no reapers there,
Amid the multitudinous ripe wheat;—
Must they, like barren lands, ungarnered lie?—
And scarce can tell the season of the year;
And wonder what is coming,—or is come
Already to the signal-posts of heaven,
Near, yet remote from any mortal sense,
Which opens only on this solar hour:—
This indecisive, delicate poise of the year,
Unmarked by any restless visitant;
Hollowed with sanctuaries of dormant life,
Contented in the narrow fields of home.
No month is unenchanted of the merle,
Whose world is here, who keeps his world with him,
Singing out of the heaven of his own breast:—
The most unearthly music of the year,
Down in these low dim dawns of Candlemas,
Drawn from a depth ineffable of peace.
Sweetest of all at this suspense of time,
Where night and day are one veiled borderland,
In many-shaded greys of gauzy air,
Pencilled with filmy February trees,
And luminous with glistening globes of rain.
And native also to this nameless clime
The solitary snowdrops, that appear
Ravished from out some underworld of dream;
And listening for its echoes, self-ensphered,
Vanish before the earth awakes in green.
What is the note will break the stillness next;
Is it the harsh voice of the Carrion Crow?
Or Nightingale's from under southern skies,
Singing of summer that no eye hath seen?
Or flute of Robin that portends the storm?
But whoso, in these Northern lands, they say,
Once sees the Golden Oriole on her nest,
Once hears the glorious singing of her mate,
Knows that the Spring will not return for him
On earth, and waits his certain hour in peace.