Whippoorwill

Hurry, hurry, Whippoorwill!
    Crowded to the very beak
    With a message you would speak,
        Good or ill.
Hurry, hurry, Whippoorwill!
As if fate behind would kill;
    Roving minstrel of the air,
    Here and there,
    And everywhere!

What is that, will or nill,
    You must say, or suffer woe,
    That your song comes panting so,
        Whippoorwill?
Is it but an idle skill,
Or a sorrow’s plaintive trill,
    Home-grief, or alarm for us,
    Makes you thus
O’er garralous?

In a breath when all was still,
    Save the merry “peeper’s” cheer
    For the opening of the year, –
        Down the hill.
Burst your song of “whippoorwill,”
Plashing like a water-mill.
    Quivering, as against the night,
    Green and white,
    The fire-fly’s light.

Coming with the daffodil,
    Nothing checks your mystic lay 
    That leaps bubbling and away,
        Like a rill
From old Winter’s ley hill,
Who no more its mirth can chill, –
    So your vespers’ every sound
    Seems to bound
    In ripples round.

Hurry, hurry, Whippoorwill!
    There you stand where you have stood
    In my wondering babyhood,
        By the sill. –
Gossip Nature’s “Jack and Gill,”
Piping merrily and shrill,
    To the very tune you sung
    When your tongue
    And mine were young.

In your music’s pulsing thrill
    Every tremor is a wave
    Rounded up as from the grave
        Memories fill
With old sweets, that yet distill
Dews for wider fields I till;
    Me those music-waves uplift,
    And I drift
    Back, as they shift,

To where life could run nor spill
    Any red wine from its cup;
    Its old flush comes mantling up
        Buoyant still, –
Though care’s wearying muster-drill
Has tamed heart, and hope, and will,
    And the swift pulse dulled to go
    With a slow
    And measured flow!

Welcome, welcome, Whippoorwill!
    For your earnest summons can
    Bring the boy back to the man,
        And your bill
Disenhume the dead and chill; –
The young joys that once could fill
    Mind and soul, though long o’ergrown,
    At your tone
Wake, everyone!