Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Samuel Kettell, ed. Specimens of American Poetry. 1829.

By To the Fringilla Melodia

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!

The violet

Awakens at thy song, and peers from out

Its fragrant nook, as if the season yet

Remain’d in doubt—

While from the rock

The columbine its crimson bell suspends,

That careless vibrates, as its slender stalk

The zephyr bends.

Say! when the blast

Of winter swept our whiten’d plains,—what clime,

What sunnier realm thou charm’dst,—and how was past

Thy joyous time?

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?

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:

Thou art return’d

On a glad errand,—to rebuild thy nest,

And fan anew the gentle fire that burn’d

Within thy breast.

And thy wild strain,

Pour’d on the gale, is love’s transporting voice—

That, calling on the plumy choir again,

Bids them rejoice:

Nor calls alone

T’ enjoy, but bids improve the fleeting hour—

Bids all that ever heard love’s witching tone,

Or felt his power.

The poet too

It soft invokes to touch the trembling wire;

Yet ah, how few its sounds shall list, how few

His song admire!

But thy sweet lay,

Thou darling of the spring! no ear disdains;

Thy sage instructress, nature, says “Be gay!”

And prompts thy strains.

O, if I knew

Like thee to sing, like thee the heart to fire,—

Youth should enchanted throng, and beauty sue

To hear my lyre.

Oft as the year

In gloom is wrapp’d, thy exile I shall mourn—

Oft as the spring returns, shall hail sincere

Thy glad return.