Poetry Archives

Glimmers gray the leafless thicket
  Close beside my garden gate,
Where, so light, from post to picket
  Hops the sparrow, blithe, sedate;
    Who, with meekly folded wing,
    Comes to sun himself and sing.

It was there, perhaps, last year,
  That his little house he built;
For he seems to perk and peer,
  And to twitter, too, and tilt
    The bare branches in between,
    With a fond, familiar mien.

Once, I know, there was a nest,
  Held there by the sideward thrust
Of those twigs that touch his breast;
  Though ’tis gone now. Some rude gust
    Caught it, over-full of snow,—
    Bent the bush,—and robbed it so

Thus our highest holds are lost,
  By the ruthless winter’s wind,
When, with swift-dismantling frost,
  The green woods we dwelt in, thinn’d
    Of their leafage, grow too cold
    For frail hopes of summer’s mold.

But if we, with spring-days mellow,
  Wake to woeful wrecks of change,
And the sparrow’s ritornello
  Scaling still its old sweet range;
    Can we do a better thing
    Than, with him, still build and sing?

Oh, my sparrow, thou dost breed
  Thought in me beyond all telling;
Shootest through me sunlight, seed,
  And fruitful blessing, with that welling
    Ripple of ecstatic rest,
    Gurgling ever from thy breast!

And thy breezy carol spurs
  Vital motion in my blood,
Such as in the sapwood stirs,
  Swells and shapes the pointed bud
      Of the lilac; and besets
      The hollows thick with violets.

Yet I know not any charm
  That can make the fleeting time
Of thy sylvan, faint alarm
  Suit itself to human rhyme:
    And my yearning rhythmic word,
    Does thee grievous wrong, dear bird.

So, however thou hast wrought
  This wild joy on heart and brain,
It is better left untaught.
  Take thou up the song again:
    There is nothing sad afloat
    On the tide that swells thy throat!