| Samuel Kettell, ed. Specimens of American Poetry. 1829. | | | | To the Fringilla Melodia | | By Henry Pickering (1781–1838) |
| | | JOY fills the vale, | |
| With joy ecstatic quivers every wing, | |
| As floats thy note upon the genial gale, | |
| Sweet bird of spring! 1 | |
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| The violet | 5 |
| Awakens at thy song, and peers from out | |
| Its fragrant nook, as if the season yet | |
| Remain’d in doubt— | |
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| While from the rock | |
| The columbine its crimson bell suspends, | 10 |
| That careless vibrates, as its slender stalk | |
| The zephyr bends. | |
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| Say! when the blast | |
| Of winter swept our whiten’d plains,—what clime, | |
| What sunnier realm thou charm’dst,—and how was past | 15 |
| Thy joyous time? | |
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| Did the green isles | |
| Detain thee long? or, ’mid the palmy groves | |
| Of the bright south, where liberty now smiles, | |
| Did’st sing thy loves? | 20 |
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| O, well I know | |
| Why thou art here thus soon, and why the bowers | |
| So near the sun have lesser charms than now | |
| Our land of flowers: | |
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| Thou art return’d | 25 |
| On a glad errand,—to rebuild thy nest, | |
| And fan anew the gentle fire that burn’d | |
| Within thy breast. | |
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| And thy wild strain, | |
| Pour’d on the gale, is love’s transporting voice— | 30 |
| That, calling on the plumy choir again, | |
| Bids them rejoice: | |
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| Nor calls alone | |
| T’ enjoy, but bids improve the fleeting hour— | |
| Bids all that ever heard love’s witching tone, | 35 |
| Or felt his power. | |
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| The poet too | |
| It soft invokes to touch the trembling wire; | |
| Yet ah, how few its sounds shall list, how few | |
| His song admire! | 40 |
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| But thy sweet lay, | |
| Thou darling of the spring! no ear disdains; | |
| Thy sage instructress, nature, says “Be gay!” | |
| And prompts thy strains. | |
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| O, if I knew | 45 |
| Like thee to sing, like thee the heart to fire,— | |
| Youth should enchanted throng, and beauty sue | |
| To hear my lyre. | |
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| Oft as the year | |
| In gloom is wrapp’d, thy exile I shall mourn— | 50 |
| Oft as the spring returns, shall hail sincere | |
| Thy glad return. | |
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