[From _Verses and Sonnets_ (New York, 1910)]
"What, dear--what dear?"
How sweet and clear
The redbird's eager voice I hear;
Perched on the honeysuckle trellis near
He sits elate,
Red as the cardinal whose name he bears,
And tossing high the gay cockade he wears
Calls to his mate,
"What, dear--what, dear?"
She stirs upon her nest,
And through her ruddy breast
The tremor of her happy thoughts repressed
Seems rising like a sigh of bliss untold,
There where the searching sunbeams' stealthy gold
Slips past the thorns and her retreat discloses,
Hid in the shadow of June's sweetest roses.
Her russet, rustic home,
Round as inverted dome
Built by themselves and planned,
Within whose tiny scope,
As though to them the hollow of God's hand,
They gladly trust their all with faith and hope.
"What, dear--what, dear?"
Are all the words I hear,
The rest is said, or sung
In some sweet, unknown tongue.
Whose music, only, charms my alien ear;
But bird, my heart can guess
All that its tones express
Of love and cheer, and fear and tenderness.
It says, "Does the day seem long--
The scented and sunny day
Because you must sit apart?
Are you lonesome, my own sweetheart?
You know you can hear my song
And you know I'm alert and strong
And a match for the wickedest jay
That ever could do us wrong.
As I sit on the snowball spray
Or this trellis not far away,
And look at you on the nest,
And think of those beautiful speckled shells
In whose orbs the birds of the future rest,
My heart with such pride and pleasure swells
As never could be expressed.
"But, dear--but, dear!"--
Now I seem to hear
A change in the notes so proud and clear--
"But, dear--but, dear!
Do you feel no fear
When day is gone and the night is here?
When the cold, white moon looks down on you,
And your feathers are damp with the chilly dew,
And I am silent, and all is still,
Save the sleepless insects, sad and shrill,
And the screeching owl, and the prowling cat,
And the howling dog--when the gruesome bat
Flits past the nest in his circling flight
Do you feel afraid in the lonely night?"
"Courage! my own, when daylight dawns
You shall hear again in the cheerful morns
My madrigal among the thorns,
Whose rugged guardianship incloses
Our link of love among the roses."