Swelling to a throbbing curve
That brave little throat?
Soon, but a season brief,
The lice among your feathers,
Stiff-winged and aimless-eyed,
With song dead you shall fall;
Refuse of some clotted ditch,
Seeking no more berries;
Why with lyric numbers now
Do you the twilight call?
Proud in your tawny plumes
Mottled in devising,
Singing as though never sang
Bird in close till now--
Sharp are the javelins
Of death that are seeking,
Seeking even simple birds
On a lilac-bough.
Crushed, forlorn, a frozen thing,
For no more nesting,
For no more speckled eggs
In pattered cup of clay,--
Soon your song shall come to this
You who make the twilight yours,
And echoes of the abbey,
At the end of day.
In the song I hear it,
The thud of a poor feathered death,
In the swelling throat I see
The splintering of song--
What demon then has worked in me
To tease my brain to bitterness--
In me who have loved bird and tree
So long, so long?
Until I come to charity,
Until I find peace again,
My curse upon the fiend or god
That will not let me hear
A bird in song upon the bough
But, hovering about the notes,
There chimes the maniac beating
Of black-winged fear.
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