Classic Poem

A CLOUDLESS heaven of Maytime
Arches the Brunswick plains
With a soft and lingering splendor
As the day in fragrance wanes.

Bright in the gilded tree-tops,
Dark on the blue o'erhead,
What sudden flight of song-birds,
On what strange errand sped!

One way their swift wings bear them—
To yonder shaded street,
Where aloft, from an open window,
A flute calls clear and sweet.

A blue-eyed, boyish player
Sits in that golden air,
While sunbeams wreathe a glory
About his auburn hair.

His playing the bird-songs answer
Impassioned out of the elms,
Till their very madness of joyance
The flute-voice overwhelms.

At length the climbing shadows
Darken window and tree;
The fluter ends his playing,
The birds their minstrelsy.

And many a golden even
For one and another year,
The feathered songsters gladdened
That witching call to hear.

But once came leaf and blossom
When o'er and o'er they sought,
But never their sweetest pipings
An answering flute-note brought.

Yet still for many a Maytime
The song-birds fluttered round,
When evening lit the tree-tops,
To hear that magic sound.

But all in vain they sought it,—
That soft, entrancing strain
No more should crown their gladness,
Nor charm their secret pain.

The birds, repining, fancied
That flute forever still,
Unweeting how its music
Had flown o'er plain and hill,

Had crossed the mightiest rivers
And Ocean's baffling flood,
While mountain snows and deserts
No bar before it stood.

For now not song-birds only
That tender strain have heard,
But men of every nation
Its melody hath stirred.

It came from the heart of the singer,
The blithe air wafts it along,
And hearts let fall their burdens,
And leap with answering song.