To a Thrush
Sing clear, O! throstle,
Thou golden-tongued apostle
And little brown-frocked brother
Of the loved Assisian!
Sing courage to the mother,
Sing strength into the man,
For they, who in another May
Trod Hope’s scant wine from grapes of pain,
Have tasted in thy song to-day
The bitter-sweet red lees again.
To them in whose sad May-time thou
Sang’st comfort from thy maple bough,
To tinge the presaged dole with sweet,
O! prophet then, be prophet now
And paraclete!
That fateful May! The pregnant vernal night
Was throbbing with the first faint pangs of day,
The while with ordered urge toward life and light,
Earth-atoms countless groped their destined way;
And one full-winged to fret
Its tender oubliette,
The warding mother-heart above it woke,
Darkling she lay in doubt, then, sudden wise,
Whispered her husband’s drowsy ear and broke
The estranging seal of slumber from his eyes:
“My hour is nigh: arise!”
Already, when, with arms for comfort linked,
The lovers at an eastward window stood,
The rosy day, in cloudy swaddlings, blinked
Through misty green new-fledged in Wister Wood.
Breathless upon this birth
The still-entranced earth
Seemed brooding, motionless in windless space.
Then rose thy priestly chant, O! holy bird!
And heaven and earth were quickened with its grace;
To tears two wedded souls were moved who heard,
And one, unborn, was stirred!
O! Comforter, enough that from thy green
Hid tabernacle in the wood’s recess
To those care-haunted lovers thou, unseen,
Should’st send thy flame-tipped song to cheer and bless.
Enough for them to hear
And feel thy presence near;
And yet when he, regardful of her ease,
Had led her back by brightening hall and stair
To her own chamber’s quietude and peace,
One maple-bowered window shook with rare,
Sweet song—and thou wert there!
Hunter of souls! the loving chase so nigh
Those spirits twain had never come before.
They saw the sacred flame within thine eye;
To them the maple’s depths quick glory wore,
As though God’s hand had lit
His altar-fire in it,
And made a fane, of virgin verdure pleached,
Wherefrom thou might’st in numbers musical
Expound the age-sweet words thy Francis preached
To thee and thine, of God’s benignant thrall
That broodeth over all.
And they, athirst for comfort, sipped thy song,
But drank not yet thy deeper homily.
Not yet, but when parturient pangs grew strong,
And from its cell the young soul struggled free—
A new joy, trailing grief,
A little crumpled leaf,
Blighted before it burgeoned from the stem—
Thou, as the fabled robin to the rood,
Wert minister of charity to them;
And from the shadows of sad parenthood
They heard and understood.
Makes God one soul a lure for snaring three?
Ah! surely; so this nursling of the nest,
This teen-touched joy, ere birth anoint of thee,
Yet bears thy chrismal music in her breast.
Five Mays have come and sped
Above her sunny head,
And still the happy song abides in her.
For though on maimed limbs the body creeps,
It doth a spirit house whose pinions stir
Familiarly the far cerulean steeps
Where God His mansion keeps.
So come, O! throstle,
Thou golden-tongued apostle
And little brown-frocked brother
Of the loved Assisian!
Sing courage to the mother,
Sing strength into the man,
That she who in another May
Came out of heaven, trailing care,
May never know that sometimes gray
Earth’s roof is and its cupboards bare.
To them in whose sad May-time thou
Sang’st comfort and thy maple bough,
To tinge the presaged dole with sweet,
O! prophet then, be prophet now
And paraclete!