Chapter V

Yea, let me feed on sounds that still assure
Me where you hide: the brooks', whose happy din
Tells where, the deep retired woods within,
Disrobed, you bathe; the birds', whose drowsy lure
Tells where you slumber, your warm nestling chin
Soft on the pure,
Pink cushion of your palm.... What better cure
For care and memory's ache
Than to behold you so, and watch you wake!

THE BUSH-SPARROW

I

Ere wild-haws, looming in the glooms,
Build bolted drifts of breezy blooms;
And in the whistling hollow there
The red-bud bends, as brown and bare
As buxom Roxy's up-stripped arm;
From some gray hickory or larch,
Sighed o'er the sodden meads of March,
The sad heart thrills and reddens warm
To hear you braving the rough storm,
Frail courier of green-gathering powers;
Rebelling sap in trees and flowers;
Love's minister come heralding--
O sweet saint-voice among bleak bowers!
O brown-red pursuivant of Spring!

II

'Moan' sob the woodland waters still
Down bloomless ledges of the hill;
And gray, gaunt clouds like harpies hang
In harpy heavens, and swoop and clang
Sharp beaks and talons of the wind:
Black scowl the forests, and unkind
The far fields as the near: while song
Seems murdered and all beauty wrong.
One weak frog only in the thaw
Of spawny pools wakes cold and raw,
Expires a melancholy bass
And stops as if bewildered: then
Along the frowning wood again,
Flung in the thin wind's vulture face,
From woolly tassels of the proud,
Red-bannered maples, long and loud,
'The Spring is come! is here! her Grace! her Grace!'