THE BIRD by THEOPHILE JULIUS HENRY MARZIALS

O sweet song-bird in the sunlight winging,
O'er crimson of poppy and yellow of wheat,
The sun springs out as you songs are springing,
And fain would be singing a song as sweet.
Sweet, sweet singing, and soft with clover
And thyme beyond number, and murmur of trees;
And perfume and pollen a weft winds over,
Trodden by grasshoppers, over and over,
And crickets re-trilling the trills that are over,
In shimmer of beetles and booming of bees.
Slumbringly sweet, for the vineyards are nooning,
My sweet one and I are a-weary with pruning,
Of sunlight and sunning, and now for the nooning, --
Low in the vine-props, lull'd by the tuning
Of wine-leaf and tendril, -- my head to her knees.
O curling and creeping leaf-rustles that cover,
The cooler, the closer, from noon that runs over,
My love in her love in the kiss of a lover,
With soft leaf-light and sun-harmonies.

O sweet song-bird, in our dreams a-winging,
And drifting the sun and the summer along,
Till slumber is full of the sun, as thy singing
Is full of the sun, or the sun of thy song;
Till dream'd in our love is the husbandman, Summer,
Love-sick and sighing, and thou the reed-flute;
He pipes of his loving, as living gets dumber,
And dumber to death, as the sunning and summer,
And day-light, and music of dancing is dumber,
And all but the frogs in the marshes are mute.
O bird! the sun is the soul of your singing,
That sings of a love you would fain be a-flinging,
And seeking a solace, the blighting but bringing, --
For singing and soul are as knit, -- as the clinging
Of lizard to lizard, where gnarls the vine-root.
But vineyards are chill, where they shook in the summer,
And summer has sunk as your singing grew dumber,
And weary we wander from night the new-comer,
Our souls love-o'erladen, our shoulders with fruit.
Heavy with honey drones home the rose-hummer --
Sun thou art darkened -- bird thou art mute.

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