2 6o IN BIRD LAND. 



" ' Or, if to me you will not hark, 



By Beaver Brook a thrusli is ringing 

 Till all the alder-coverts dark 



Seem sunshine-dappled with his singing. 



'"Come out beneath the unmastered sky, 

 With its emancipating spaces. 

 And learn to sing as well as I, 

 Without premeditated graces. 



" ' Come out ! with me the oriole cries, 

 Escape the demon that pursues you ! 

 And hark I the cuckoo weatherwise, 



Still hiding, farther onward wooes you.' " 



But this time, for a wonder, the poet declines the 

 invitation to go out of doors, because, as he says, 

 " a bird is singing in my brain ; " and yet he 

 does so with evident regret, for he exclaims, in 

 response to the cat-bird's plea, — 



" ' Alas, dear friend, that, all my days. 

 Has poured from that syringa thicket 

 The quaintly discontinuous lays 

 To which I hold a season ticket, — 



" ' A season ticket cheaply bought 

 With a dessert of pilfered berries, 

 And who so oft my love has caught 

 With morn and evening voluntaries, 



" ' Deem me not faithless, if all day 

 Among my dusty books I linger, 

 No pipe, like thee, for June to play 

 With fancy-led, half-conscious finger. 



