Little Brown Bird

Little Brown Bird

O LITTLE brown bird in the rain,
In the sweet rain of spring,
How you carry the youth of the world
In the bend of your wing!
For you the long day is for song
And the night is for sleep–
With never a sunrise too soon
Or a midnight too deep!

For you every pool is the sky,
Breaking clouds chasing through,–
A heaven so instant and near
That you bathe in its blue!–
And yours is the freedom to rise
To some song-haunted star
Or sink on soft wing to the wood
Where your brown nestlings are.

So busy, so strong and so glad,
So care-free and young,
So tingling with life to be lived
And with songs to be sung,
O little brown bird!–with your heart
That's the heart of the Spring–
How you carry the hope of the world
In the bend of your wing!

"Little Brown Bird." by Isabel Ecclestone Mackay (1875-1928) From: Fires of Driftwood. by Isabel Ecclestone Mackay. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, Limited, 1922, p. 72.
[www.digital.library.upenn.edu/ women/mackay/driftwood/bird.html]