Robin Redbreast

When icy March winds from their gray domain
    Whirl down the untimely snows in blinding dust,
    Bonny brown Robin, cowering from the gust,
In gloomy hemlocks, do ye not complain,
Betrayed so sadly by those heralds twain,
    Crocus and catkined willow, with distrust
    Of all the spring’s delusive flatteries thrust
On simple things too confident of gain?
“Nay!” Redbreast answers” “even here I sing
    My songs of cheer, and bless each hardy bloom
That dares forecast the too reluctant spring,
    When earth is cold as in a marble tomb;
And not for these alone my faith is sung,
It gladdens the young heart and makes the old heart young!”

The gray old prophets, of a past so old
    Tradition stumbles o’er its misty years,
    Caught gleams of glory out of heavenly spheres,
And glooms of Hadean night hung manifold
Over a far-off future, and outrolled
    Their awful “burdens” to the heedless ears
    Of unbelief, and listening scorn, whose jeers
Could drown no echo of the tale they told.
They saw the event, but took no heed of time,
    If for a day or for an endless age,
And gave it voice in confidence sublime,
    Though saints might shudder or the heathen rage.
And, seeing Truth is of the eternal Now,
Æons should bow to her; but she would never bow!

The bird’s dim instinct feels the coming spring,
    And bubbles, joyous, in prophetic song,
    In the seer-soul supernal echoes throng
From distant ages, and his numbers fling
The impulse onward, as an eagle’s wing
    The waves of ether, with vibration strong.
    To dateless eras the foregleams belong
That bird and prophet in their frenzy sing.
The air is full of meanings to a sense
    Quick to discern and ready to respond.
What shall be is in all its elements,
    And stands confessed before the enchanter’s wand.
Ye need but clothe in words your instincts dumb,
Breathed on by Heaven true seers and songsters to become.