Читать книгу Come Hither: A Collection of Rhymes and Poems for the Young of All Ages - Various - Страница 135

122

THE BIRDS

He. Where thou dwellest, in what Grove,

Tell me Fair One, tell me Love;

thou thy charming nest dost build,

O thou pride of every field!

She.Yonder stands a lonely tree,

There I live and mourn for thee;

Morning drinks my silent tear,

And evening winds my sorrow bear.

He. O thou summer's harmony,

I have lived and mourned for thee;

Each day I mourn along the wood,

And night hath heard my sorrows loud.

She.Dost thou truly long for me?

And am I thus sweet to thee?

Sorrow now is at an end,

O my Lover and my Friend!

He. Come, on wings of joy we'll fly

To where my bower hangs on high;

Come, and make thy calm retreat

Among green leaves and blossoms sweet.

William Blake

123

TWO PEWITS

Under the after-sunset sky

Two pewits sport and cry,

More white than is the moon on high

Riding the dark surge silently;

More black than earth. Their cry

Is the one sound under the sky.

They alone move, now low, now high,

And merrily they cry

To the mischievous Spring sky,

Plunging earthward, tossing high,

Over the ghost who wonders why

So merrily they cry and fly,

Nor choose 'twixt earth and sky,

While the moon's quarter silently

Rides, and earth rests as silently.

Edward Thomas

124

TO A WATERFOWL

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

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,

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,—

Lone wandering, but not lost.

All day thy wings have fanned

At that far height, the cold thin atmosphere,

Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land,

Though the dark night is near.

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 sheltered nest.

Thou'rt gone: the abyss of heaven

Hath swallowed 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,

In the long way that I must tread alone,

Will lead my steps aright.

William Cullen Bryant

125

MIDNIGHT

... Midnight was come, when every vital thing

With sweet sound sleep their weary limbs did rest,

The beasts were still, the little birds that sing

Now sweetly slept, beside their mother's breast,

The old and all were shrouded in their nest:

The waters calm, the cruel seas did cease,

The woods, and fields, and all things held their peace.

The golden stars were whirled amid their race,

And on the earth did laugh with twinkling light,

When each thing, nestled in his resting-place,

Forgat day's pain with pleasure of the night:

The hare had not the greedy hounds in sight,

The fearful deer of death stood not in doubt,

The partridge dreamed not of the falcon's foot.

The ugly bear now minded not the stake,

Nor how the cruel mastives do him tear;

The stag lay still unrousèd from the brake;

The foamy boar feared not the hunter's spear:

All things were still, in desert, bush, and brere:[73]

With quiet heart, now from their travails ceased,

Soundly they slept in midst of all their rest.

Thomas Sackville, Lord Buckhurst