46 
The Parula 
But with age come fear and sorrow, 
Memories of past misfortunes, 
Pessimism, born of failures. 
Half-healed wounds, bequests of folly. 
Just as childhood romps and frolics 
Heedless of complaining grandsires, 
So around these swampland prophets, 
While they groan and foretell tempests, 
Dainty birds in summer hover. 
In the moss-hung limbs they gather, 
Rainbow-tinted, quick-winged warblers, 
Heedless, joyous, evanescent. 
In the trailing beards of gray moss. 
Dainty hammock nests they tangle, 
Weave them of the long gray fibres, 
Line them with the softest meshes, 
Leave within them precious treasures, 
Tiny eggs, with rarest markings, 
Tender, unprotected nestlings. 
If by night the lightning flashes. 
If from high Chocorua's ledges 
