| |
| A DAY and then a week passed by: | |
| The redbird hanging from the sill | |
| Sang not; and all were wondering why | |
| It was so still— | |
| When one bright morning, loud and clear, | 5 |
| Its whistle smote my drowsy ear, | |
| Ten times repeated, till the sound | |
| Filled every echoing niche around; | |
| And all things earliest loved by me,— | |
| The bird, the brook, the flower, the tree,— | 10 |
| Came back again, as thus I heard | |
| The cardinal bird. | |
| |
| Where maple orchards towered aloft, | |
| And spicewood bushes spread below, | |
| Where skies were blue, and winds were soft, | 15 |
| I could but go— | |
| For, opening through a wildering haze, | |
| Appeared my restless childhood’s days; | |
| And truant feet and loitering mood | |
| Soon found me in the same old wood | 20 |
| (Illusion’s hour but seldom brings | |
| So much the very form of things) | |
| Where first I sought, and saw, and heard | |
| The cardinal bird. | |
| |
| Then came green meadows, broad and bright, | 25 |
| Where dandelions, with wealth untold, | |
| Gleamed on the young and eager sight | |
| Like stars of gold; | |
| And on the very meadow’s edge, | |
| Beneath the ragged blackberry hedge, | 30 |
| Mid mosses golden, gray and green, | |
| The fresh young buttercups were seen, | |
| And small spring-beauties, sent to be | |
| The heralds of anemone: | |
| All just as when I earliest heard | 35 |
| The cardinal bird. | |
| |
| Upon the gray old forest’s rim | |
| I snuffed the crab-tree’s sweet perfume; | |
| And farther, where the light was dim, | |
| I saw the bloom | 40 |
| Of May-apples, beneath the tent | |
| Of umbrel leaves above them bent; | |
| Where oft was shifting light and shade | |
| The blue-eyed ivy wildly strayed; | |
| And Solomon’s-seal, in graceful play, | 45 |
| Swung where the straggling sunlight lay: | |
| The same as when I earliest heard | |
| The cardinal bird. | |
| |
| And on the slope, above the rill | |
| That wound among the sugar-trees, | 50 |
| I heard them at their labors still, | |
| The murmuring bees: | |
| Bold foragers! that come and go | |
| Without permit from friend or foe; | |
| In the tall tulip-trees o’erhead | 55 |
| On pollen greedily they fed, | |
| And from low purple phlox, that grew | |
| About my feet, sipped honey-dew:— | |
| How like the scenes when first I heard | |
| The cardinal bird! | 60 |
| |
| How like!—and yet … The spell grows weak:— | |
| Ah, but I miss the sunny brow— | |
| The sparkling eye—the ruddy cheek! | |
| Where, where are now | |
| The three who then beside me stood | 65 |
| Like sunbeams in the dusky wood? | |
| Alas, I am alone! Since then, | |
| They’ve trod the weary ways of men: | |
| One on the eve of manhood died; | |
| Two in its flush of power and pride. | 70 |
| Their graves are green, where first we heard | |
| The cardinal bird. | |
| |
| The redbird, from the window hung, | |
| Not long my fancies thus beguiled: | |
| Again in maple-groves it sung | 75 |
| Its wood-notes wild; | |
| For, rousing with a tearful eye, | |
| I gave it to the trees and sky! | |
| I missed so much those brothers three, | |
| Who walked youth’s flowery ways with me, | 80 |
| I could not, dared not but believe | |
| It too had brothers, that would grieve | |
| Till in old haunts again ’t was heard,— | |
| The cardinal bird. | |
| |
