210



A Spring Migrant, 1916.



A SPRING MIGRANT, 1916.


Written expressly for the “Avicultural Magazine."



To-day I heard the willow-wren

In song by Ashford Ripple: then

In joyous cadence from the combe

A thrush made answer “Welcome home!”


* * -it *


Where is thy home thou voyager

From that last Libyan forest-spur ?


For thou has seen the camels ply

Strung out in desert Tripoli,


And through the palms—a silver net—


The moon upon the minaret,


And dared the amethystine deep,


And passed the cities in their sleep.


And thou hast watched the dawn caress

The temples and the cypresses,


And felt the quivering heat that moves

At noonday in the olive groves.


But now the cry of battle rings

Beneath thy dainty flutterings

O’er land and sea, and through the skies

The armed bird of warfare flies.


Bearing its human lives (as when

The fabled eagle bore the wren),


And looking from the zenith-height

On deaths abysmal, infinite.


The mine, the cannon and the Hare,


The raucous rending of the air

Beset thy way, and more than these,


These and a thousand sadnesses—


The treeless woods, the blighted grass,


The crosses where a battle was—


Alas ! thy dear refrain might be

(For wistful love) an elegy.


Nothing could daunt thee ! Ever shone

The vision of the halcyon—


Of Ashford Ripple and the combe

Calling thee northward. Welcome home !


A. T-B.



