Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, ST FRANCIS TO THE BIRDS, by WILLIAM ALEXANDER PERCY



Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

ST FRANCIS TO THE BIRDS, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Daytime? The stars quite gone?
Last Line: Go! But birds, my birds, come back to me!
Subject(s): Birds; God; Love; Saints


Daytime? The stars quite gone?
O brother Sleep, you tripped me in my prayers,
And bound me in your scarves of colored dreams!
Pray God the brethren find me not
Flat in the dew and just awake.
Fie! fie! thou slug-a-bed!
Up! kneel to thine orisons -- compose thy robe --
And get thee from this green and idle wood
Back to the world!
Alas, the summer air hath blown
Shame from my heart! Jesu, the prayers must wait --
Light-hearted day on naked feet
Runs thro' the woods, and I must watch her here
Shaking the boughs above my head,
And winning with her rogueries the leaves' applause.
Delicious so! . . .
Idler, pagan, Francis, up! Ah, well --

Prophets and patriarchs!
What company is this?
The blessed birds of God --
Silent and orderly, row on row,
Thick on the branches, scholarwise on the grass --
Sparrows and swallows, bobolinks and larks --
Tiny and big, and gay-and hempen-gowned --
Attentive all and silent; eyes on me --
Littlest children, my brothers -- O birds,
Good morrow! For your presence thanks. . . .
And yet, may I confess --
Beseeching you will not mistake my ignorance
For lack of gentleness or knightly courtesy --
I know not quite what mission draws you here?
Only has Father Noah seen such multitudes.
Is it, perchance, with tree-top news you come
Requiring such deliverance?
Alack, I have not any roof at all,
Much less an ark.
But should your needs petition one, content yourselves;
The brethren shall be willing carpenters.
Your watchful eyes and silence, courteous and prim,
Betray I have mistook your coming's cause.
Perhaps on your first-waking flights,
Beholding me so quiet in the grass,
You thought me dead, and came with friendly haste
To hide in leaves my obvious corruption.
Three hops and a silver chuckle --
Robin, irreverent robin, wrong again?
Ho! ho! at last the dear God sends me sense!
A sermon 'tis! Robin, I guessed!
Come nearer, darling children, close!
O lovely cloud of wings! O tiny storm of twitter!
What barren faith was ours
To pass you by these many days
Without one salutation in Christ's name,
Or news of His impending kingdom once!
Let these poor words win your forgiveness,
And His, whose frailest ones we have o'erlooked.
Brethren! . . .
Ahem! --
(Saints! what text can serve!)
"In those days Jesus said:
My Father's kingdom may be likened to
A grain of mustard seed,
Which, being sown, is smallest of all seeds,
But, growing up, is greatest of all herbs,
Till in the shadow of its branches lodge
The birds of heaven."
Yet, no! these words He never spoke.
He knew as you or I
The idle ways of summer, and the fields
Where poppies in their silken kerchiefs crowd the wheat,
And, when the dry, quick autumn winds had stripped their scarlet,
He, too, had seen their tiny million seeds --
Mere dust beside the mustard's burliness.
Mark nodded or forgot, poor fisherman!
How often thus they understood Him not!
And in these far-off days their surface words we seize,
Set up, adore, and miss the gospel underneath
Forgetting they were simple men,
And He, dear God, who only aimed at simpleness.
But still He did say Heaven's kingdom was a tree,
A mighty tree with branches' room for all,
And sunny babblement of leaves where all
His winged ones might skim and shine at ease.
O little, brown minores,
Come -- let's skip the text! But after it
In any well-conducted sermon comes, you know,
The exhortation. Now I should proclaim
The evil of your lives and urge repentance!
When summer dawn is here? and only choristers?
How may it be?
What evils may I warn your hearts against?
What words of guidance give?
None come to me. . . . No ownership is yours,
But winds and trees and evening waters and the sun
Are yours in largesse, without counterclaim --
The eighth commandment was not meant for you!
I would not coax you from your ways of lechery;
For not your will, but God's,
Fills all the April air with mating and the chirp
Of love. Obedient be to His good season.
I think ye do no murder, yet --
Sometimes it grieves my very soul to see
The lesser brethren fly your swift pursuit.
If God directed so you take your livelihood,
'Tis well, but spare, I pray, their tiny span of bliss
If food less petulent may serve instead;
Nor their destruction ever make your sport.
Little children, no rebuke is meant;
I only pray your gentleness. . . .
Indeed, indeed, He set your flight
Above the paths of sin! Advise? conjure?
I do you wrong. Rather, I think,
He put it in your hearts to come to me
Not judging I could give
Morsel of help or little twig of truth,
But that the comfort of your presence might be mine.
For sometimes, little brethren of the woods,
We, in the common world beneath your trees,
So clearly see the weakness and the sin about,
That only them we see, and we forget
The holiness that still persists, the light, yea, God, Himself!
Belike He feared for me such hour,
And in His care sent you, His seraphs of the trees.
For you, tho' of the world, share not its taint,
Nor breathe nor know its sin.
If we lived so, the sudden curve
And anxious fanning of soft plumes
Would stir our bending heads,
And off we'd fly to -- to that same mustard tree of yours!

Was ever such a sermon?
I, no text; no morals, you!
Let's call it then no sermon, but instead
I'll sit within the shadow of this tree
With you companionably close,
And while the hoyden breeze on emerald wings
Lets through the shimmering lances of the sun,
And hums aloud for wantonness -- we'll gossip!
Oh, not of sin or other grave concern,
But right familiarly of what we know -- His life.
Saints! what a fluttering
And sparkle of expectancy!
Upon my lap at last, robin of mine?
'Twas thus about His knees that day
The children came and begged for tales,
Vexing poor Matthew, and bequeathing us
His dearest page.
Let me see . . . ah . . .
The book is not so full of tales for birds;
'Twas writ for men, you see.
I doubt not men had far the greater need --
'Twas not because he loved you less!
But now I do recall a story; one you'll love --
That day by Jordan!
They had been urchin comrades years before,
That lonely Jordan prophet and our Lord,
But him the wilderness and stars and solitude
Had swallowed up this many a day.
So now his eyes were full of tears
To see, across the grass where all the people sat,
The little boy he loved run to him, call his name,
And in the cool, clear water kneel
To beg his blessing.
The desert had not dried his heart away;
And so he wept, and clasped Him close, and prayed. . . .
But I'd forgot the Holy Ghost!
He could have been
A scarlet cloud of seraphim, a lightning bolt,
Fire or darkness, what He willed!
But what chose He? what creature honored there?
From out of Heaven He flew -- a lovely dove!
That was a day for birds!
Sure, you must love the Holy Ghost -- and keep
Your hearts and plumage clean and bright for Him,
And make your mourning baths baptismal in a way!
Another story I recall, dear children.
But whether it be writ or only dreamed
I cannot say. . . . Gethsemane . . .
My heart is there so much, I do remember more,
Perhaps, than they that set it down. . . .
It is not spring talk for a golden dawn,
But even you, gleamers of God, should know.
Before the end He longed to come once more
To that familiar garden that He loved.
Its olive trees and sandy barrenness
That drank the moon were home to Him,
For other home He had not, save
Such waste and lonely places off the way
As men forgot. And so that night, the last, He knew,
That He might pray together with the twelve,
He came unto the garden where it lay
All full of moonlight and of silence,
And with Him brought for comfort them He loved.
Indeed, He loved us all -- too well, too well --
But ah, the mortal of His heart had need to choose
For special tenderness, those few.
How tired He was! Oh, weary unto death;
And needed most mere human love!
But they whom He had chosen, whom He loved,
His own, His very own -- they slept!
God! God!
Had Lancelot or Tristran been His knights,
They had not slept. . . .
When those we love have failed us in our need
There is no bitterness undrunk for death. . . .
That night, as thus He lay,
After the prayer, too tired for tears,
And even God forgot Him with the rest,
I think that one of you, beholding from
The shadows where you hid, that agony,
Trembled and paused and bent your head,
Then, for you knew no other, quavered forth
Your silver serenade for healing to His heart. . . .
The torches and the sudden faces broke
Your song. . . . Likely He never heard . . .
But only you bethought to comfort Him that night. . . .

They slept . . . God! Let me back into the world!
Lest coming suddenly again
He finds them sleeping still.
Good-bye, good-bye!
Remember to give thanks each day to Him
Who made your feathers clean and fair and warm,
Who set within your hearts clear springs of happiness,
Who shares with you His home, the sacred sky.
And I beseech you, little brothers, think
On us, who, soaring, never leave the earth.
O swallows, should you see, when evening comes,
One leaning from his darkened window, dark,
His eyes unlighted, bitter with the day's defeat,
Toss where your vagrant flight may catch his gaze;
For, as you scatter up the golden sky,
Haply he may remember Jacob's dream,
The ladder and the wings, and, holpen, send his heart
In God's light careless way to climb with you.
And you, sweet singers of the dark,
That tune your serenades but by the stars,
Love gardens most;
For garden casements do unlock themselves
With magic silentness unto your spell,
And music unto sleepless eyes doth bring
The lonely solace of unloosened tears.
But most, you morning choristers, that haunt the eaves,
Whose little voices like a hundred stars
Shine just before the sun, tapping with dreams
The lazy sleep that lingers on our lids,
Fail not to keep your matins clear for us;
And should you know, by some bird craft of yours,
The room wherein an almost mother lies,
Choir your sweetest there, as tho' the babe to come
Were son of God -- for so he is!
Again, farewell!

I cannot leave ye thus!
O Father, I have failed!
What truth can they recall
That I have given them?
None, none! And now the hour is past!
Birds, birds, stay yet and harken this last word,
Too simple to be long remembered; but, forgot,
Taking the shining and the wings
And all seraphic meaning from the life we know --
And you that glisten through the lovely blue,
Not singly, but in shoals and multitudes,
Bear witness to the truth that I would tell:
That child of God, man-child or bird-child
Or silver-winged star-child of the night,
That lives apart, unto himself,
Unsharing, unsolicitous, and free,
Hath vainly lived; for life, this present life,
Is but the throe to brotherhood!
Behold our hearts, which we forget to hide,
Are fashioned so in likeness to His own,
That only joy of all can bring them bliss,
And every special woe must bring them pain.
So long as one,
But one of all His children knoweth grief,
So long we sorrow too. Nor can there be a heaven
Till hell be tenantless. . . .
The love we bear hath neither gates nor walls
To keep men out, but tendereth itself
A refuge city to the shelterless,
Calling across the tempest-shadowed plain
Unceasingly, "Come in, come in!"
And, for they will not come, but scatter far,
Grieving and hurt and blind into the storm,
There is no peace for us, and all our days
Are hungered for the sight of them that stray,
Are empty to the cry that sounds in vain,
"Come in, come in!" . . .

So must it be -- now.
But I perceive another day not too far off;
And in that day there shall not one remain
Uncleansed of tears and sin and every stain;
And in that day, behold, the golden droves
Of His light creatures shall invade the dawn,
Shall stream across the hush beyond all stars,
And people those celestial places He hath planned.

Some day. . . . But now . . .
I go to them that have the greater need.
God's blessing steep your hearts in peace,
And all your deeds in patient tenderness.

My name! . . . They call me through the woods!
Quick, quick! away! . . . Here, Egidio! I come!
Up, up into the leaves lest seeing you
They say there was a miracle!
Go! But birds, my birds, come back to me!





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