When autumn comes, we see on the telegraph wires long lines of swallows shivering. We can tell that their troubled hearts are cold and wonder why. Without having seen it, even the new fledgling yearns for Africa's warm and cloudless sky. Without ever having seen it! It is just as we desire heaven in our moments of fright. They are there, atilt, perched to observe the air; then off in a sudden, easy, circled flight back to their starting point to wonder there. It's hard to leave the portals of the church! hard it's no longer so warm as in months gone by! how sad they grow! and why has the nut tree, tall and strong, deceived them, let its leaves droop and die? The year's brood doesn't know it at all, this springtime clad in the cerements of fall. And the soul that is worn with suffering, before it crosses the ultimate, holy shore to gain the heaven of eternal spring tries, pauses, and, ere leaving, turns once more. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest... |