| |
| HE sang so wildly, did the Boy, | |
| That you could never tell | |
| If ’t was a madman’s voice you heard, | |
| Or if the spirit of a bird | |
| Within his heart did dwell: | 5 |
| A bird that dallies with his voice | |
| Among the matted branches; | |
| Or on the free blue air his note | |
| To pierce, and fall, and rise, and float, | |
| With bolder utterance launches. | 10 |
| None ever was so sweet as he, | |
| The boy that wildly sang to me; | |
| Though toilsome was the way and long, | |
| He led me not to lose the song. | |
| |
| But when again we stood below | 15 |
| The unhidden sky, his feet | |
| Grew slacker, and his note more slow, | |
| But more than doubly sweet. | |
| He led me then a little way | |
| Athwart the barren moor, | 20 |
| And then he stayed and bade me stay | |
| Beside a cottage door; | |
| I could have stayed of mine own will, | |
| In truth, my eye and heart to fill | |
| With the sweet sight which I saw there, | 25 |
| At the dwelling of the cottager. | |
| |
| A little in the doorway sitting, | |
| The mother plied her busy knitting, | |
| And her cheek so softly smil’d, | |
| You might be sure, although her gaze | 30 |
| Was on the meshes of the lace, | |
| Yet her thoughts were with her child. | |
| But when the boy had heard her voice, | |
| As o’er her work she did rejoice, | |
| His became silent altogether, | 35 |
| And slily creeping by the wall, | |
| He seiz’d a single plume, let fall | |
| By some wild bird of longest feather; | |
| And all a-tremble with his freak, | |
| He touch’d her lightly on the cheek. | 40 |
| |
| Oh, what a loveliness her eyes | |
| Gather in that one moment’s space, | |
| While peeping round the post she spies | |
| Her darling’s laughing face! | |
| Oh, mother’s love is glorifying, | 45 |
| On the cheek like sunset lying; | |
| In the eyes a moisten’d light, | |
| Softer than the moon at night! | |
| |
