Classic Poem

Here behind the huddled houses
Which the squalid gardens break
Golden bill my heart arouses
With his golden gurgling beak;
Disregarding all the squalor
In a backyard after rain
Boldly lifts the Bird of Valour
His mellifluous refrain:
Lifts the fanfare heroes hearkened
When his singing shook the dew
In the dells by oak-leaves darkened
Eighteen hundred years ago,
Sings the song to which Finn listened
When he first was famed and named,
And the ruffian blue eyes glistened
For Finn loved the bird untamed.
I too hear the self-same whistle
Purling all around his nest
Singing to the eggs that nestle
Underneath a browner breast,
Hear the wordless notes transcendent
Over every human rhyme,
Careless, sweet and independent
Of all circumstance of Time;
And I think: though many wrongs ache
In my heart, what matters wrong,
If I sing but for the Song's sake,
If I reach as brave a song,
Filled with fight and self-reliance
Warring with all evil chance,
Loudly whistling my defiance
In the slums of circumstance,
Or, above all, go one better
And, ignoring human wrong,
Bravely as the Bird of Letter
Fling on air a heartless song.