Collected Poems

"Is it a thrush?" I asked.

"A thrush," she said.

Will taught him that

"That was Will's tune.

before

He left the doorway settle for his bed,

Sick as you see, and couldn't teach him more.

"He'd bring his Bible here o' nights, would Will,

Following the light, and whiles when it was dark And days were warm, he'd sit there whistling still, Teaching the bird. He whistled like a lark."

"Jack! Jack!" A joyous flutter stirred the cage,
Shaking the blossoms down. The bird began;
The woman turned again to want and wage,
And in the inner chamber sighed the man.

How clear the song was!

Musing as I heard,

My fancies wandered from the droning wife To sad comparison of man and bird,——

The broken song, the uncompleted life,

That seemed a broken song; and of the two,
My thought a moment deemed the bird more

blest,

That, when the sun shone, sang the notes it knew, Without desire or knowledge of the rest.

Nay, happier man.

For him futurity

Still hides a hope that this his earthly praise Finds heavenly end, for surely will not He, Solver of all, above his Flower of Days,

Teach him the song that no one living knows? Let the man die, with that half-chant of his,What Now discovers not Hereafter shows,

And God will surely teach him more than this.

Again the Bird. I turned, and passed along;

But Time and Death, Eternity and Change, Talked with me ever, and the climbing song Rose in my hearing, beautiful and strange.

THE CHILD-MUSICIAN

HE had played for his lordship's levee,

He had played for her ladyship's whim,

Till the poor little head was heavy,
And the poor little brain would swim.

And the face grew peaked and eerie,
And the large eyes strange and bright,
And they said-too late-" He is weary!
He shall rest for, at least, To-night!"

But at dawn, when the birds were waking,
As they watched in the silent room,
With the sound of a strained cord breaking,
A something snapped in the gloom.

'Twas a string of his violoncello,

And they heard him stir in his bed :—-"Make room for a tired little fellow,

Kind God!" was the last that he said.

How

THE CRADLE

OW steadfastly she'd worked at it!
How lovingly had drest

With all her would-be-mother's wit

That little rosy nest!

How longingly she'd hung on it !——
It sometimes seemed, she said,
There lay beneath its coverlet
A little sleeping head.

He came at last, the tiny guest,

Ere bleak December fled; That rosy nest he never prest Her coffin was his bed.