The Summer Birds - An 1842 Poem
By Mrs. Amelia B. Welby.
- Sweet warblers of the sunny hours,
- Forever on the wing
- I love them as I love the flowers,
- The sunlight and the spring.
- They come like pleasant memories,
- In Summer's joyous time,
- And sing their gushing melodies
- As I would sing a rhyme.
-
- In the green and quiet places
- Where the golden sunlight falls,
- We sit with smiling faces,
- To list their silvery calls;
- And when their holy anthems
- Come pealing through the air,
- Our heart leaps forth to meet them,
- With a blessing and a prayer.
-
- Amid the morning's fragrant dew
- Amidst the mists of even
- They warble on as if they drew
- Their music down from Heaven.
- How sweetly sounds each mellow note,
- Beneath the moon's pale ray,
- When dying zephyrs rise and float,
- Like lovers' sighs, away!
-
- Like the shadowy spirits seem at eve,
- Among the tombs they glide;
- Where sweet pale forms for which we grieve,
- Lie sleeping side by side.
- They break with song the solemn hush
- Where peace reclines her head,
- And link their lays with mournful thoughts
- That cluster round the dead;
-
- For never can my soul forget
- The loves of other years;
- Their memories fill my spirit yet
- I've kept them green with tears;
- And their singing greets my heart at times,
- As in the days of yore,
- Though their music and their loveliness
- Is o'er forever o'er.
-
- And often, when the mournful sight
- Comes with a low, sweet tune,
- And sets a star on every height,
- And one beside the moon
- When not a sound of wind or wave
- The holy stillness mars,
- I look above and try to trace
- Their dwellings in the stars.
-
- The birds! the birds of summer hours
- They bring a gush of glee,
- To a child among the fragrant flowers
- To the sailor on the sea.
- We hear their thrilling voices
- In their swift and airy flight,
- And the inmost heart rejoices
- With a calm and pure delight.
-
- In the stillness of the starlight hours,
- When I am with the dead,
- Oh! may they flutter mid the flowers
- That blossom o'er my head.
- And pour their songs of gladness forth
- In one melodious strain,
- O'er lips whose broken melody
- Shall never sing again.
May 18, 1842. Huntingdon Journal 7(19): 1. From the Christian World. Also May 25, 1842 in the Jeffersonian Republican 3(12): 1.