TO A STORM-STAID BIRD
Trembler! a month is past, and thou
Wert singing on the thorn,
And shaking dew-drops from the bough
In the golden haze of morn!
My heart was just as thou, as light—
As loving of the breeze,
That kiss'd thee in its elfin flight,
Through the green acacia trees.
And now the winter snow-flakes lie
All on thy widow'd wing;
Trembler! methinks I hear thee sigh
For the silver days of spring.
But shake thy plume—the world is free
Before thee—warbler, fly!
Blest by a sunbeam and by me,
Bird of my heart! good-bye!
THE WOLF-DROVE
No night-star in the welkin blue! no moonshade round the trees
That grew down to the sea-swept foot of the ancient Pyrenees!
The cold gray mantle of the mist, along the shoulders cast
Of those wild mountains, to and fro, hung waving in the blast.
A snow-crown rising on their brows, in royalty they stood,
As if they vice-reign'd on a throne of winter solitude;
Those hills that rose far upward, till in majesty they bent
Their world's great eye-orb on her own immortal lineament!