A moment, sweet delusion,
Like birds the brown leaves hover;
But it will not be long
Before their wild confusion
Fall wavering down to cover
The poet and his song.
J.R. Lowell.
Birds.[5]
Birds are singing round my window,
Tunes the sweetest ever heard,
And I hang my cage there daily,
But I never catch a bird.
So with thoughts my brain is peopled,
And they sing there all day long:
But they will not fold their pinions
In the little cage of Song.
R.H. Stoddard.
[5] From "The Poems of R.H. Stoddard," copyright, 1880, by Charles Scribner's Sons.