TO A WOODLAND THRUSH 



iyj 



Xor worthy of your lofty trust? 



.Matchless talent, minstrel peerless:— 



Unrestrained now, and fearless, 



The rapture swells your wondrous throat, 



Then shapes itself in a silvery note 



That grows in volume sweet and clear, 



Working its witchery on the ear, 



Pulsing, lingering, waning, then — 



Hark! 'tis the miracle o'er again, 



And yet again, and o'er and o'er, 



As conscious of exhaustless store. 



Ah, ever as with lavish hand 



They give who most the power command. 



And to their latest acts succeed 



The worthy song, the noble deed. 



With heaven-directed loftier strain, 



Echoing back from heaven again, 



Your spirit flees our earthly sphere, 



Flashes above the atmosphere 



To heights of ultimate desire, 



Where chords of angel lute and lyre 



Translate to music all our tears, 



Answer our final hopes and fears, 



Tell what our souls can all but know 



In highest joy or depths of woe; 



Breathe life's unspoken subtleties, 



And death's profoundest mysteries ; — 



To sources of those strains that seem 



To reach us in a holy dream, 



Or (in some reverie profound) 



A doubtful gossamer of sound 



That, yet, transcends our farthest sight. 



And mocks our fancy's boldest flight. 



O ! how your angel music rings 



And vibrates on the tense heart-strings, 



Pulsates and quivers and, spent its force. 



Is ever renewed from that lofty source. 



Remote, to which when our sun sets low 



Our souls, like a soaring voice, shall go, 



Freed of the fellow clay that bound 



Our life and yours to the common ground. 



— Edmund J. Sawyer. 



