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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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.