WHEN Nature had made all her birds, | |
With no more cares to think on, | |
She gave a rippling laugh, and out | |
There flew a Bobolinkon. | |
|
She laughed again; out flew a mate; | 5 |
A breeze of Eden bore them | |
Across the fields of Paradise, | |
The sunrise reddening oer them. | |
|
Incarnate sport and holiday, | |
They flew and sang forever: | 10 |
Their souls through June were all in tune, | |
Their wings were weary never. | |
|
Their tribe, still drunk with air and light, | |
And perfume of the meadow, | |
Go reeling up and down the sky, | 15 |
In sunshine and in shadow. | |
|
One springs from out the dew-wet grass; | |
Another follows after; | |
The morn is thrilling with their songs | |
And peals of merry laughter. | 20 |
|
From out the marshes and the brook, | |
They set the tall reeds swinging, | |
And meet, and frolic in the air, | |
Half prattling and half singing. | |
|
When morning winds sweep meadow-lands | 25 |
In green and russet billows, | |
And toss the lonely elm-trees boughs, | |
And silver all the willows, | |
|
I see you buffeting the breeze, | |
Or with its motion swaying, | 30 |
Your notes half drowned against the wind | |
Or down the current playing. | |
|
When far away oer grassy flats, | |
Where the thick wood commences, | |
The white-sleeved mowers look like specks | 35 |
Beyond the zigzag fences, | |
|
And noon is hot, and barn-roofs gleam | |
White in the pale blue distance, | |
I hear the saucy minstrels still | |
In chattering persistence. | 40 |
|
When Eve her domes of opal fire | |
Piles round the blue horizon, | |
Or thunder rolls from hill to hill | |
A Kyrie Eleison, | |
|
Still merriest of the merry birds, | 45 |
Your sparkle is unfading; | |
Pied harlequins of June,no end | |
Of song and masquerading. | |
|
What cadences of bubbling mirth, | |
Too quick for bar and rhythm! | 50 |
What ecstasies, too full to keep | |
Coherent measure with them! | |
|
O could I share, without champagne | |
Or muscadel, your frolic, | |
The glad delirium of your joy, | 55 |
Your fun unapostolic, | |
|
Your drunken jargon through the fields, | |
Your bobolonkish gabble, | |
Your fine Anacreontic glee, | |
Your tipsy revellers babble! | 60 |
|
Nay, let me not profane such joy | |
With similes of folly; | |
No wine of earth could waken songs | |
So delicately jolly! | |
|
O boundless self-contentment, voiced | 65 |
In flying air-born bubbles! | |
O joy that mocks our sad unrest, | |
And drowns our earth-born troubles! | |
|
Hope springs with you: I dread no more | |
Despondency and dullness; | 70 |
For Good Supreme can never fail | |
That gives such perfect fullness. | |
|
The life that floods the happy fields | |
With song and light and color | |
Will shape our lives to richer states, | 75 |
And heap our measures fuller.
1866. | |
|