When as a child I listened to the Whip-poor-will at dark,
And with the dawn awakened to the music of the Lark.
Then what a chorus wonderful when morning had begun,—
The very leaves, it seemed to me, were singing to the sun,
And calling on the world asleep to waken and behold
The king in glory coming forth along his path of gold.
The crimson-fronted Linnet sang above the river’s edge,
The Finches in the evergreens, the Thrasher in the hedge;
Each one as if a dozen songs were chorused in his own,
And all the world were listening to him and him alone.