Poetry - the Snow Bird
- The Swallow and the Blue Bird, the Couriers of Spring
- Receive at their coming, the welcome of friends;
- Yet 'tis pleasant to see, too, the fluttering wing
- Of the bird that arrives when the snow flake descends.
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- Though dull in his plumage, and small is his form,
- And sunless the day is, and cheerless the night
- He comes like the bow "in the van of the storm,"
- To show us how beauty and horror unite.
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- When the red-breast returns in the Spring of the year
- The Snow Bird has gone to his region of snow,
- And builds him a nest underneath a glacier
- Where icicles hang o'er a cavern below.
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- For he comes but in winter, and stays but a day,
- As to breathe above zero, for him is too warm,
- So he spreads his light pinion and hastens away,
- And goes as he came, in advance of the storm.
- B.
March 31, 1830. Youth's Companion 3(45): 180. From the Boston Courier.