The sun reels up the sky, the mists are gone,
And overhead the lilting bird of dawn
Has spread, adoring-wise, as for a prayer,
Those wondrous wings of his,
Which never yet were symbols of despair!
It is the feathery foeman of the night
Who shakes adown the air
Song-scented trills and sunlit ecstasies.
Aye! 'tis the lark, the chorister in gray,
Who sings hosannas to the lord of light,
And will not stint the measure of his lay
As hour to hour, and joy to joy, succeeds;
For he's the morning-mirth of English meads,
And we who mark the moving of his wings,
We know how sweet the soil whereof he sings,--
How glad the grass, how green the summer's thrall,
How like a gracious garden the dear Land
That loves the ocean and the tossed-up sand
Whereof the wind has made a coronal;
And how, in spring and summer, at sun-rise,
The birds fling out their raptures to the skies,
And have the grace of God upon them all.