————The swan with arched neck
Between her white wings mantling, proudly rowes
Her state with oary feet: yet oft they quit
The dank, and rising on stiff pennons, tour
The mid æreal sky.
Opportunities for observing the flight of the wild swan are seldom, and hence it is seldom mentioned by our poets. The migrations of other aquatic birds are frequent themes of their speculation.
To a Water-fowl.
Whither, ’midst falling dew,
While glow the heavens with the last steps of day,
Far through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue
Thy solitary way?
Vainly the fowler’s eye
Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong.
As darkly painted on the crimson sky
Thy figure floats along.
Seek’st thou the plashy brink
Of weedy lake, or maize of river wide,
Or where the rocky billows rise and sink
On the chafed ocean’s side?
There is a Power whose care
Teaches thy way along that pathless coast,—
The desert and illimitable air,—
Lone wandering, but not lost.
All day thy wings have fann’d,
At that far height, the cold thin atmosphere;
Yet stoop not, weary to the welcome land,
Though the dark night is near.
And soon that toil shall end;
Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest,
And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bend
Soon o’er thy shelter’d nest.
Thou’rt gone, the abyss of heaven
Hath swallow’d up thy form; yet on my heart
Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given,
And shall not soon depart.
He, who from zone to zone
Guides through the boundless sky the certain flight,
In the long way that I must tread alone,
Will lead my steps aright.