Still hiding, farther onward wooes you.’”
But this time, for a wonder, the poet declines the invitation to go out of doors, because, as he says, “a bird is singing in my brain;” and yet he does so with evident regret, for he exclaims, in response to the cat-bird’s plea,—
“‘Alas, dear friend, that, all my days,
Has poured from that syringa thicket
The quaintly discontinuous lays
To which I hold a season ticket,—
“‘A season ticket cheaply bought
With a dessert of pilfered berries,
And who so oft my love has caught
With morn and evening voluntaries,