And on these alien coasts, above,
Where silver ripples break the stream's
Long blue, from some roof-sheltering grove
A hidden parrot scolds and screams.
Ah, nothing, nothing! Commonest things:
A touch, a glimpse, a sound, a breath—
It is a song the oriole sings—
And all the rest belongs to death.
But oriole, my oriole,
Were some bright seraph sent from bliss
With songs of heaven to win my soul
From simple memories such as this,
What could he tell to tempt my ear
From you? What high thing could there be,
So tenderly and sweetly dear
As my lost boyhood is to me?
William Dean Howells [1837-1920]
TO AN ORIOLE
How falls it, oriole, thou hast come to fly
In tropic splendor through our Northern sky?
At some glad moment was it nature's choice
To dower a scrap of sunset with a voice?
Or did some orange tulip, flaked with black,
In some forgotten garden, ages back,