| Hunt and Lee, comps. The Book of the Sonnet. 1867. | | | | III. The Swallow | | By Edmund Clarence Stedman (1833–1908) |
| | | HAD I, my love declared, the tireless wing | |
| That wafts the swallow to her northern skies, | |
| I would not, sheer within the rich surprise | |
| Of full-blown Summer, like the swallow, fling | |
| My coyer being; but would follow Spring, | 5 |
| Melodious consort, as she daily flies, | |
| Apace with suns that o’er new woodlands rise | |
| Each morn—with rains her gentler stages bring. | |
| My pinions should beat music with her own; | |
| Her smiles and odors should delight me ever, | 10 |
| Gliding, with measured progress, from the zone | |
| Where golden seas receive the mighty river, | |
| Unto yon lichened cliffs, whose ridges sever | |
| Our Norseland from the Arctic surge’s moan. | | | | |
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