To sing a fleeting song and die! What merit in a vagrant note That flutters through an empty sky On idly pulsing wings afloat! Within the ocean wastes of air No ear to catch its slender tone, Along the wide savannah's glare Into the seas of silence blown. Or if some silvern drops of sound From its slight stream should patter down Upon the vast earth's glittering round, In greening field or dusty town, Who there would heed its fleeting dew Drunk by the thirsty soil before The sun has climbed the morning blue, And life crept out from sleep's dim door? Yet song is native to the bird, That trills in heaven a buoyant stave, Pouring his melody unheard Upon the trembling ether's wave. And native, too, the poet's note, Though none to hear the distant song Throbbing in regions far remote From earth and its unheedful throng. For Beauty has a secret grace Bestowed in solitude alone; Both bird and poet haunt the place About the purlieus of her zone; And, winging through the higher ways Close to the levels of her throne, There catch some fragments of her lays, And sing the music as their own. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...CONTRA MORTEM: THE BEING by HAYDEN CARRUTH MISSING THE BO IN THE HENHOUSE by HAYDEN CARRUTH AMOUR by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON TO MARY CHURCH TERRELL - LECTURER by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON DOWN BY THE CARIB SEA: 6. SUNSET IN THE TROPICS by JAMES WELDON JOHNSON GUNS AS KEYS: AND THE GREAT GATE SWINGS by AMY LOWELL |