Classic Poem

Les Hirondelles.

Captive, bowed beneath a Moorish chain,
Pining on the shore; a warrior cried,
" Gentle birds, I welcome you again;
You, who cannot winter's cold abide
Swallows! ye are not of hope bereft;
Here, in burning clime, she's still your stay:
France it surely is that ye have left;
Have ye nothing of my land to say?

" Thrice the year hath rolled, since from you first
I besought some token, to be brought
From the valley where, obscure, I nursed
Dreams of life with future blessings fraught
Where the limpid streamlet winds between
Banks bedecked with lilacs fresh and gay,
Ye our little cottage must have seen:
Have ye nothing of that vale to say?

" Haply, nestling in the roof of straw,
One of you, where I myself was born,
May have seen — and pitied when you saw —
There a mother, loving and forlorn!
Dying be she — still she thinks in vain
That she hears my footstep on the way;
Oft she listens; then she weeps again:
Have ye nothing of her love to say?

" Is my gentle sister wedded yet?
Did ye of our youths behold the throng
Bidden to the nuptials? did they set
To her praises some enlivening song?
Friends and comrades, who my youth recall,
They who followed me through many a fray,
Have they seen again the village — all?
Have ye nothing of all these to say?

" O'er their bodies, now, perchance, the foe
Through the valley may the pathway take:
Him as master may my cottage know;
He my sister's holy bonds may break.
Thrown o'er all around are fetters strong;
Nor for me is mother left to pray —
Swallows! to my country ye belong:
Have ye nothing of her ills to say? "