THE SONG-SPARROW

Glimmers gray the leafless thicket

Close beside my garden gate,

Where, so light, from post to picket

Hops the sparrow, blithe, sedate;

Who, with meekly folded wing,

Comes to sun himself and sing.

It was there, perhaps, last year,

That his little house he built;

For he seems to perk and peer,

And to twitter, too, and tilt

The bare branches in between,

With a fond, familiar mien.

Once, I know, there was a nest,

Held there by the sideward thrust

Of those twigs that touch his breast;

Though‘ tis gone now. Some rude gust

Caught it, over-full of snow,—

Bent the bush,— and stole it so.

Thus our highest holds are lost,

In the ruthless winter's wind,

When, with swift-dismantling frost,

The green woods we dwelt in, thinn'd

Of their leafage, grow too cold

For frail hopes of summer's mold.

But if we, with spring-days mellow,

Wake to woeful wrecks of change,

And the sparrow's ritornello

Scaling still its old sweet range;

Can we do a better thing

Than, with him, still build and sing?

Oh, my sparrow, thou dost breed

Thought in me beyond all telling;

Shootest through me sunlight, seed,

And fruitful blessing, with that welling

Ripple of ecstatic rest

Gurgling ever from thy breast!

And thy breezy carol spurs

Vital motion in my blood,

Such as in the sap-wood stirs,

Swells and shapes the pointed bud

Of the lilac; and besets

The hollow thick with violets.

Yet I know not any charm

That can make the fleeting time

Of thy sylvan, faint alarm

Suit itself to human rhyme:

And my yearning rhythmic word

Does thee grievous wrong, blithe bird.

So, however thou hast wrought

This wild joy on heart and brain,

It is better left untaught.

Take thou up the song again:

There is nothing sad afloat

On the tide that swells thy throat!