Lo, in my path
A frozen songbird lies,
A victim of the sky’s
Blind, elemental wrath.
The stolid year
Shall not in me repress
The impulsive tenderness
That moves a pitying tear.
Life’s flutter o’er,
Thy quavering heart, now still,
No more shall throb and thrill,
Shall love and fear no more.
For thee in vain
Shall Spring array the woods,
In nest-safe neighborhoods:—
Thou canst not build again.
Did instinct fail
When, from the Boreal rack,
Athwart thy migrant track
Hurtled the ruthless gale?
A cruel nest
The feather-mocking snows!
And ah, what gasping throes
Assailed thy dying breast!
Wing-spent, alone,
Adrift from every mate,
Flung down by baffling fate,
Thou froze to the Unknown.
How saith the Word?
Does He who governs all
Take notice of the fall
Forlorn, of thee, poor bird?
And is it so
His awful love divine
Provides for me and mine
When frore the tempests blow?
Mute traveler, say,
How fare we when we die,
And whither do we fly
Along the unseen way?
Vain questionings
In death’s bleak eddy whirled!
What heeds the other world
My broken, bleeding wings?
Is life no more?
Is death the final doom?
Or shall the soul replume
Her flight and sing and soar?
Yea, surely, He
Who melts my love to tears
For this dead songster, hears
And pities mine and me.
His love must know
Our sorrow, and will lift
Our numbed lives from the drift
Of death’s all-hushing snow.