Classic Poem

In the Spring, that sweet season of birth
When Nature puts Winter to flight,
When day sits enthroned, and all earth
Is awake from the dreams of the night,

When the wood is new-clad in its green,
And the fields curl black 'neath the plows,
When bees stir abroad, and a keen
Scented breath my dull heart doth arouse;

When the rill its soft murmur resumes,
When the birds are at work at their nests,
And the sun bursts anew through his glooms,
And with joy greets his garrulous guests:

When forth in the street to their play
The children of poverty throng,
And are bathed in the sun's warming ray
Who have herded like sheep for so long:

When light through the scant window-pane
Where it long has been feeble, now shines,
Making magical wonders again
In the dust-motes with visible lines;

Then my poor captive bird in his cage,
Sick at heart through the Winter's dull hour,
Once more felt his song's heritage,
And his throat swelled again in its power.

A moment to silence he turned —
Like the hush of an evening in May —
Then, more fervently yet as he yearned,
He broke forth again with his lay.

In that music so sweet which I heard
It seemed he was weeping alone,
And each note in the voice of my bird
Must have touched the cold heart of a stone.

And thus, as he sat there so still
And flooded my chamber with sound,
His melody seemed to upfill
With a meaning my sympathy found:
With my thrilling
Forests filling,
I would greet the May —
Free from capture,
Ease my rapture
'Mid the branches gay.
'Would be ringing
With my singing
In the woodland fair,
Till a flying
Voice replying,
Bid me welcome there.
Trouble scorning,
Every morning
Would I hunt my bread —
Oh, I languish
Here in anguish
From thy bounty fed!
I, a creature
True to Nature,
Not enslaved like thee,
All my feeling
Full revealing,
Would be wild and free!
Over meadow,
In wood-shadow,
Through the air so clean,
Where perfuming
Flowers blooming
Brighten all the scene —
Thither, thither,
Lest I wither
Here in lonely woe,
Toward my thronging
Fellows longing,
Let, oh, let me go!