| |
I. OH, thou northland bobolink, | |
| Looking over Summer’s brink | |
| Up to Winter, worn and dim, | |
| Peering down from mountain rim, | |
| Something takes me in thy note, | 5 |
| Quivering wing, and bubbling throat; | |
| Something moves me in thy ways— | |
| Bird, rejoicing in thy days, | |
| In thy upward-hovering flight. | |
| In thy suit of black and white, | 10 |
| Chestnut cape and circled crown, | |
| In thy mate of speckled brown; | |
| Surely I may pause and think | |
| Of my boyhood’s bobolink. | |
| |
II. Soaring over meadows wild | 15 |
| (Greener pastures never smiled); | |
| Raining music from above, | |
| Full of rapture, full of love; | |
| Frolic, gay and debonair, | |
| Yet not all exempt from care, | 20 |
| For thy nest is in the grass, | |
| And thou worriest as I pass; | |
| But nor hand nor foot of mine | |
| Shall do harm to thee or thine; | |
| I, musing, only pause to think | 25 |
| Of my boyhood’s bobolink. | |
| |
III. But no bobolink of mine | |
| Ever sang o’er mead so fine, | |
| Starred with flowers of every hue, | |
| Gold and purple, white and blue; | 30 |
| Painted-cup, anemone, | |
| Jacob’s-ladder, fleur-de-lis, | |
| Orchid, harebell, shooting-star, | |
| Crane’s-bill, lupine, seen afar, | |
| Primrose, poppy, saxifrage, | 35 |
| Pictured type on Nature’s page— | |
| These and others here unnamed, | |
| In northland gardens, yet untamed, | |
| Deck the fields where thou dost sing, | |
| Mounting up on trembling wing; | 40 |
| While in wistful mood I think | |
| Of my boyhood’s bobolink. | |
| |
IV. On Unalaska’s emerald lea, | |
| On lonely isles in Bering Sea, | |
| On far Siberia’s barren shore, | 45 |
| On north Alaska’s tundra floor, | |
| At morn, at noon, in pallid night, | |
| We heard thy song and saw thy flight, | |
| While I, sighing, could but think | |
| Of my boyhood’s bobolink. | 50 |
| |
