So loud, so loud the thrushes kept their calling,
Plover or blackbird never heeding me;
So loud the millstream too kept fretting, falling,
O’er bar and bank in brawling, boisterous glee.
So loud, so loud; yet blackbird, thrush nor plover,
Nor noisy millstream, in its fret and fall,
Could drown the voice, the low voice of my lover,
My lover calling through the thrushes’ call.
“Come down, come down!” he called, and straight the thrushes
From mate to mate sang all at once, “Come down!”
And while the water laughed through reeds and rushes,
The blackbird chirped, the plover piped, “Come down!”
Then down and off, and through the fields of clover,
I followed, followed at my lover’s call;
Listening no more to blackbird, thrush or plover,
The water’s laugh, the millstream’s fret and fall.
Nora Perry.
A SONG OF WINTER.
BARB’d blossom of the guarded gorse,
I love thee where I see thee shine:
Thou sweetener of our common ways,
And brightener of our wintry days.
Flower of the gorse, the rose is dead,
Thou art undying, oh, be mine!
Be mine with all thy thorns, and prest
Close on a heart that asks not rest.
I pluck thee, and thy stigma set
Upon my breast and on my brow;
Blow, buds, and ’plenish so my wreath
That none may know the wounds beneath.
O crown of thorn that seem’st of gold,
No festal coronal art thou;
Thy honey’d blossoms are but hives
That guard the growth of wingèd lives.
I saw thee in the time of flowers
As sunshine spill’d upon the land,
Or burning bushes all ablaze
With sacred fire; but went my ways.