THE SONG OF THE THRUSH
Ah! the May was grand this mornin’!
Shure, how could I feel forlorn in
Such a land, when tree and flower tossed their kisses to the breeze?
Could an Irish heart be quiet
While the Spring was runnin’ riot,
An’ the birds of free America were singin’ in the trees?
In the songs that they were singin’
No familiar note was ringin’,
But I strove to imitate them an’ I whistled like a lad.
Oh, my heart was warm to love them
For the very newness of them—
For the ould songs that they helped me to forget—an’ I was glad.
So I mocked the feathered choir
To my hungry heart’s desire,
An’ I gloried in the comradeship that made their joy my own.
Till a new note sounded, stillin’
All the rest. A thrush was trillin’!
Ah! the thrush I left behind me in the fields about Athlone!
Where, upon the whitethorn swayin’,
He was minstrel of the Mayin’,
In my days of love an’ laughter that the years have laid at rest;
Here again his notes were ringin’!
But I’d lost the heart for singin’—
Ah! the song I could not answer was the one I knew the best.