Classic Poem

IMMORTAL bird,
Whose song God's purest poet long since heard,
And caught within the golden chains of rhyme,
Our captive for all time!

O tender tones,
That none who, hearing, ever can forget,
Even when the city's thunder crashes and groans,
And the wood's whisper moans—
How wonderful that thou art with us yet!

High on the Hills of Song thy song is set,
Within the very blue where first thy voice
Made his young heart rejoice;
And from empyrean heights forever shall fall
Thy silver madrigal,
Drenching the world with thine enraptured stream,
Thy heavenly dream,
Cleansing us as in fires angelical,
Sweeping us to the mountain-peaks of morn
Where beauty and love were born.
He loved thee; and we love thee for his sake;
And sometimes when the heart is like to break
With ancient sorrows that wake
In the still darkness of some desolate night,
We hear thee too as he once heard thee sing
On a white morn of Spring;
And all our soul is flooded with the light
Thy melody, and thine alone, can bring.

We hear thee—yes; but only through his song!
Our ears were empty of thy fluted trills
Until he snatched thee from thy splendid hills,
And gave the wonder of thy joy to us,
O bird miraculous!

We hear thee now—through him;
And we rejoice that as thy date grows dim,
He, and not we, first heard that lovely sound
Which all his spirit drowned
In a wild ecstasy beyond our ken.
And if thy voice now fills heaven's leafiest glen,
Singing again,
Flinging its silver cataract of bliss
Down many a sheer abyss,
Be glad, O bird, that when thou camest here,
Thy song fell on his ear,
And he was thy divine interpreter!