Poetry Archives

Like to a swarm of birds, with jarring cries
Descend on me my swarming memories;
Light mid the yellow leaves, that shake and sigh,
Of the bowed alder—that is even I!—
Brooding its shadow in the violet
Unprofitable river of Regret.
They settle screaming—Then the evil sound,
By the moist wind’s impatient hushing drowned,
Dies by degrees, till nothing more is heard
Save the lone singing of a single bird,
Save the clear voice—O singer, sweetly done!—
Warbling the praises of the Absent One….
And in the silence of a summer night
Sultry and splendid, by a late moon’s light
That sad and sallow peers above the hill,
The humid hushing wind that ranges still
Rocks to a whispered sleepsong languidly
The bird lamenting and the shivering tree.