dots-menu
×

Home  »  A Victorian Anthology, 1837–1895  »  The Rookery

Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). A Victorian Anthology, 1837–1895. 1895.

Charles Tennyson Turner 1808–79

The Rookery

METHOUGHT, as I beheld the rookery pass

Homeward at dusk upon the rising wind,

How every heart in that close-flying mass

Was well befriended by the Almighty mind:

He marks each sable wing that soars or drops,

He sees them forth at morning to their fare,

He sets them floating on His evening air,

He sends them home to rest on the tree-tops:

And when through umber’d leaves the night-winds pour,

With lusty impulse rocking all the grove,

The stress is measur’d by an eye of love,

No root is burst, though all the branches roar;

And, in the morning, cheerly as before,

The dark clan talks, the social instincts move.