| |
| WHITHER, ’midst falling dew, | |
| While glow the heavens with the last steps of day | |
| Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue | |
| Thy solitary way? | |
| |
| Vainly the fowler’s eye | 5 |
| Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong, | |
| As, darkly painted on the crimson sky, | |
| Thy figure floats along. | |
| |
| Seek’st thou the plashy brink | |
| Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide, | 10 |
| Or where the rocking billows rise and sink | |
| On the chafed ocean side? | |
| |
| There is a Power whose care | |
| Teaches thy way along that pathless coast,— | |
| The desert and illimitable air,— | 15 |
| Lone wandering, but not lost. | |
| |
| All day thy wings have fann’d | |
| At that far height, the cold thin atmosphere; | |
| Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land, | |
| Though the dark night is near. | 20 |
| |
| And soon that toil shall end, | |
| Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest, | |
| And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bend | |
| Soon o’er thy shelter’d nest. | |
| |
| Thou ’rt gone, the abyss of heaven | 25 |
| Hath swallow’d up thy form; yet, on my heart | |
| Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given, | |
| And shall not soon depart. | |
| |
| He, who, from zone to zone, | |
| Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, | 30 |
| In the long way that I must tread alone, | |
| Will lead my steps aright. | |
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