| Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). A Victorian Anthology, 1837–1895. 1895. |
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| Asian Birds |
| | | Robert Seymour Bridges (1844–1930) |
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| IN this May-month, by grace | |
| of heaven, things shoot apace. | |
| The waiting multitude | |
| of fair boughs in the wood,— | |
| How few days have array’d | 5 |
| their beauty in green shade! | |
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| What have I seen or heard? | |
| it was the yellow bird | |
| Sang in the tree: he flew | |
| a flame against the blue; | 10 |
| Upward he flash’d. Again, | |
| hark! ’t is his heavenly strain, | |
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| Another! Hush! Behold, | |
| many, like boats of gold, | |
| From waving branch to branch | 15 |
| their airy bodies launch. | |
| What music is like this, | |
| where each note is a kiss? | |
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| The golden willows lift | |
| their boughs the sun to sift: | 20 |
| Their silken streamers screen | |
| the sky with veils of green, | |
| To make a cage of song, | |
| where feather’d lovers throng. | |
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| How the delicious notes | 25 |
| come bubbling from their throats! | |
| Full and sweet, how they are shed | |
| like round pearls from a thread! | |
| The motions of their flight | |
| are wishes of delight. | 30 |
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| Hearing their song, I trace | |
| the secret of their grace. | |
| Ah, could I this fair time | |
| so fashion into rhyme, | |
| The poem that I sing | 35 |
| would be the voice of spring. | |
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