Classic Poem

What has winter left for thee,
That, within the ancient tree,
Thou dost linger, in thy gray,
Sober vestments, like some friar,
Haunting still the old abbaye,
Wasted by the strife and fire?
Wherefore house thee thus alone,
When the other tribes have gone?—
With them to the forest speed:
Leave to human heart the grief,
That in woe and dusky weed,
When winter twilight's cold and brief,
Walks sad with hooded Thought, through perish'd wood and leaf.

Sure I know thee!—thou art he,
That, with reckless minstrelsy,
Lately sung—while all the grove,
By the spring-buds won to joy,
Bathed in fragrance, breathed of love—
Ditty of a wild annoy;
Mocking all with scornful strain,
Till the passion grew to pain,
And each humbler warbler fled,
Silent, in his shame and fear,
Thou the while, with wing outspread,
Sweetly voiced in spite of sneer.
Throned on the topmost bough, or darting wild through air.

Thou hast pleasures. I have seen,
When the buxom spring was green,
How thy nest was tended—how
Thou didst gather straw and blade,
And, within the ancient bough,
Sit, the stem and leaf to braid.—
Patient was thy watch, and stern
Lesson might the serpent learn,—
Crawling where thy young ones lie,
With his cruel, keen desire,—
From thy eagle-raging eye,
Showing all thy soul on fire,
While talon, beak and wing declared the warrior's ire.

Patient, as thy young ones grow,
Use of feeble wings to show,
How, to glide from bough to bough,
How with gradual flight, to bear,
Poised on spreading pinion now,
Through the yielding heart of air;
And, when free of wing, and high,
Winging, singing, through the sky,—
Then, with thy triumphant strain,
Matchless in unmeasured might,
As if born madden'd brain,
Ecstasied with deep delight,
Whirling in voice aloft, in far, capricious flight.

Why the cynic temper?—why
Still that strain of mockery?
Art thou truer? Dost thou sneer,
As thou haply know'st that none
Of the love songs spring must hear,
Speaks fidelity but one?
Thou art constant—that I know—
To thy young ones,—to the foe,—
To thy mate, and to the tree,
That beside my window-sill,
Many a year, has been to thee
Cottage-home and empire still,—
Thou wast the sovereign there, and ever hadst thy will.

Still maintain it—thou alone,
Of the birds, when summer's gone,
Keep'st thy dwelling, hold'st thy place,
As if in thy breast there grew
Something, which, to human race,
Kept thee dedicate and true.
Cynical thy song, but mine
Might be cynical like thine,
Could I deem with thee, that all
Of the vows in spring we hear,
Were forgotten by the fall;—
But I shrink from doubt so drear;—
I yield my heart to faith, and love when thou wouldst sneer.