I HAVE never seen it;
But somewhere in a Patagonian forest gay
Or plumy mere of Paraguay
Must flit
The bird that you resemble.
Without name,
A spare, uncaptured, shapely painted thing
No naturalist has told of. Yet I know
The beauty of that body's balancing,
I know its contemplative perch, and how
Slanting it sidles on an insect quest
With step impulsive and precise and slim,
And every poise of that begilded crest;
A diver without aim;
A gleam; a question from a bough unguessed;
Once very near, and then a streak of flame,
And then—an echo through the valley
Of calls as lonely and as weird
As though a phantom broke its heart with rage…
These things I understand,
And how in pools where it has paused and peered
Its scarlet feet leave pricks upon the sand.
Men have dreamed
That such a bird might hang within a cage,
And dreamed the song
That not to any listener may belong.
Yet once it seemed
Most solitary-clear—
A passing stave at noontide singly blown
That I
Heard, and still hear,
Resounding suddenly
Down valleys of the mind, now you are flown.