|
| HE rises and begins to round, | |
| He drops the silver chain of sound | |
| Of many links without a break, | |
| In chirrup, whistle, slur and shake, | |
| All intervolv’d and spreading wide, | 5 |
| Like water-dimples down a tide | |
| Where ripple ripple overcurls | |
| And eddy into eddy whirls; | |
| A press of hurried notes that run | |
| So fleet they scarce are more than one, | 10 |
| Yet changingly the trills repeat | |
| And linger ringing while they fleet, | |
| Sweet to the quick o’ the ear, and dear | |
| To her beyond the handmaid ear, | |
| Who sits beside our inner springs, | 15 |
| Too often dry for this he brings, | |
| Which seems the very jet of earth | |
| At sight of sun, her musci’s mirth, | |
| As up he wings the spiral stair, | |
| A song of light, and pierces air | 20 |
| With fountain ardor, fountain play, | |
| To reach the shining tops of day, | |
| And drink in everything discern’d | |
| An ecstasy to music turn’d, | |
| Impell’d by what his happy bill | 25 |
| Disperses; drinking, showering still, | |
| Unthinking save that he may give | |
| His voice the outlet, there to live | |
| Renew’d in endless notes of glee, | |
| So thirsty of his voice is he, | 30 |
| For all to hear and all to know | |
| That he is joy, awake, aglow, | |
| The tumult of the heart to hear | |
| Through pureness filter’d crystal-clear, | |
| And know the pleasure sprinkled bright | 35 |
| By simple singing of delight, | |
| Shrill, irreflective, unrestrain’d, | |
| Rapt, ringing, on the jet sustain’d | |
| Without a break, without a fall, | |
| Sweet-silvery, sheer lyrical, | 40 |
| Perennial, quavering up the chord | |
| Like myriad dews of sunny sward | |
| That trembling into fulness shine, | |
| And sparkle dropping argentine; | |
| Such wooing as the ear receives | 45 |
| From zephyr caught in choric leaves | |
| Of aspens when their chattering net | |
| Is flush’d to white with shivers wet; | |
| And such the water-spirit’s chime | |
| On mountain heights in morning’s prime, | 50 |
| Too freshly sweet to seem excess, | |
| Too animate to need a stress; | |
| But wider over many heads | |
| The starry voice ascending spreads, | |
| Awakening, as it waxes thin, | 55 |
| The best in us to him akin; | |
| And every face to watch him rais’d, | |
| Puts on the light of children prais’d, | |
| So rich our human pleasure ripes | |
| When sweetness on sincereness pipes, | 60 |
| Though nought be promis’d from the seas, | |
| But only a soft-ruffling breeze | |
| Sweep glittering on a still content, | |
| Serenity in ravishment. | |
|
| For singing till his heaven fills, | 65 |
| ’T is love of earth that he instils, | |
| And ever winging up and up, | |
| Our valley is his golden cup, | |
| And he the wine which overflows | |
| To lift us with him as he goes: | 70 |
| The woods and brooks, the sheep and kine | |
| He is, the hills, the human line, | |
| The meadows green, the fallows brown, | |
| The dreams of labor in the town; | |
| He sings the sap, the quicken’d veins; | 75 |
| The wedding song of sun and rains | |
| He is, the dance of children, thanks | |
| Of sowers, shout of primrose-banks, | |
| And eye of violets while they breathe; | |
| All these the circling song will wreathe, | 80 |
| And you shall hear the herb and tree, | |
| The better heart of men shall see, | |
| Shall feel celestially, as long | |
| As you crave nothing save the song. | |
| Was never voice of ours could say | 85 |
| Our inmost in the sweetest way, | |
| Like yonder voice aloft, and link | |
| All hearers in the song they drink: | |
| Our wisdom speaks from failing blood, | |
| Our passion is too full in flood, | 90 |
| We want the key of his wild note | |
| Of truthful in a tuneful throat, | |
| The song seraphically free | |
| Of taint of personality, | |
| So pure that it salutes the suns | 95 |
| The voice of one for millions, | |
| In whom the millions rejoice | |
| For giving their one spirit voice. | |
|
| Yet men have we, whom we revere, | |
| Now names, and men still housing here, | 100 |
| Whose lives, by many a battle-dint | |
| Defaced, and grinding wheels on flint, | |
| Yield substance, though they sing not, sweet | |
| For song our highest heaven to greet: | |
| Whom heavenly singing gives us new, | 105 |
| Enspheres them brilliant in our blue, | |
| From firmest base to farthest leap, | |
| Because their love of Earth is deep, | |
| And they are warriors in accord | |
| With life to serve and pass reward, | 110 |
| So touching purest and so heard | |
| In the brain’s reflex of yon bird; | |
| Wherefore their soul in me, or mine, | |
| Through self-forgetfulness divine, | |
| In them, that song aloft maintains, | 115 |
| To fill the sky and thrill the plains | |
| With showerings drawn from human stores, | |
| As he to silence nearer soars, | |
| Extends the world at wings and dome, | |
| More spacious making more our home, | 120 |
| Till lost on his aërial rings | |
| In light, and then the fancy sings. | |
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