Chapter V

Hark!
It is afternoon,
Yet that must be a lark.
No other bird flies up so high
And shakes its sparkling spray of song
Through the grey clouds in the sky,
No other bird has just that thrilling
Note in trilling,
Or can sustain so long
Its liquid flood of mirth:
As rare a boon
To thirsty ears as God's dew is to earth.
Yet it is afternoon.
I thought the larks, all scorning
The jaded hours, sang only in the morning.
And I, whose first flushed youth is going,
Who watch the swift noon growing
Upon me, hour by hour,
Feeling that I must always stand apart
From earth's sweet singers, because I lacked the pow'r
To loose the morning song-burst from my heart—
Oh, songster of the mellowing hour of day,
Shall I, too, late or soon,
Learn from your throat the way
To loose my power of song even in my afternoon?