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From “The Pelican Island”
—BIRDS, the free tenants of land, air, and ocean, | |
| Their forms all symmetry, their motions grace; | |
| In plumage, delicate and beautiful, | |
| Thick without burden, close as fishes’ scales, | |
| Or loose as full-grown poppies to the breeze; | 5 |
| With wings that might have had a soul within them, | |
| They bore their owners by such sweet enchantment, | |
| —Birds, small and great, of endless shapes and colors, | |
| Here flew and perched, there swam and dived at pleasure; | |
| Watchful and agile, uttering voices wild | 10 |
| And harsh, yet in accordance with the waves | |
| Upon the beach, the wind in caverns moaning, | |
| Or winds and waves abroad upon the water. | |
| Some sought their food among the finny shoals, | |
| Swift darting from the clouds, emerging soon | 15 |
| With slender captives glittering in their beaks; | |
| These in recesses of steep crags constructed | |
| Their eyries inaccessible, and trained | |
| Their hardy broods to forage in all weathers: | |
| Others, more gorgeously apparelled, dwelt | 20 |
| Among the woods, on nature’s daintiest feeding, | |
| Herbs, seeds, and roots; or, ever on the wing, | |
| Pursuing insects through the boundless air: | |
| In hollow trees or thickets these concealed | |
| Their exquisitely woven nests; where lay | 25 |
| Their callow offspring, quiet as the down | |
| On their own breasts, till from her search the dam | |
| With laden bill returned, and shared the meal | |
| Among her clamorous suppliants, all agape; | |
| Then, cowering o’er them with expanded wings, | 30 |
| She felt how sweet it is to be a mother. | |
| Of these, a few, with melody untaught, | |
| Turned all the air to music within hearing, | |
| Themselves unseen; while bolder quiristers | |
| On loftiest branches strained their clarion-pipes, | 35 |
| And made the forest echo to their screams | |
| Discordant,—yet there was no discord there, | |
| But tempered harmony; all tones combining, | |
| In the rich confluence of ten thousand tongues, | |
| To tell of joy and to inspire it. Who | 40 |
| Could hear such concert, and not join in chorus? | |
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