Thomas Wentworth Higginson
Thou songless wanderer mid the songful birds,
Through gorgeous cipher, past the reach of words,
Yet dear to every child
In glad pursuit beguiled,
Living his unspoiled day mid flowers and flocks and herds!
Thou winged blossom, liberated thing,
What secret tie binds thee to other flowers,
Still held within the garden’s fostering?
Will they too soar with the completed hours,
Take flight, and be like thee
Irrevocable free,
Hovering at will o’er their parental bowers?
Or is thy lustre drawn from heavenly hues,
A sumptuous drifting fragment of the sky,
Caught when the sunset its last glance imbues
With sudden splendor, and the tree-tops high
Grasp that swift blazonry,
The lend those tints to thee,
On thee to float a few short hours, and die?
Birds have their nests; they rear their eager young,
And flit on errands all the livelong day;
Each fieldmouse keeps the homestad whence it sprung;
But thou art Nature’s freeman,–
free to stray Unfettered through the wood,
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