Stedman and Hutchinson, comps. A Library of American Literature:
An Anthology in Eleven Volumes. 1891.
Vols. IX–XI: Literature of the Republic, Part IV., 1861–1889
The Bobolinks
By Christopher Pearse Cranch (1813–1892)W
With no more cares to think on,
She gave a rippling laugh, and out
There flew a Bobolinkon.
A breeze of Eden bore them
Across the fields of Paradise,
The sunrise reddening o’er them.
They flew and sang forever:
Their souls through June were all in tune,
Their wings were weary never.
And perfume of the meadow,
Go reeling up and down the sky,
In sunshine and in shadow.
Another follows after;
The morn is thrilling with their songs
And peals of merry laughter.
They set the tall reeds swinging,
And meet, and frolic in the air,
Half prattling and half singing.
In green and russet billows,
And toss the lonely elm-tree’s boughs,
And silver all the willows,
Or with its motion swaying,
Your notes half drowned against the wind
Or down the current playing.
Where the thick wood commences,
The white-sleeved mowers look like specks
Beyond the zigzag fences,
White in the pale blue distance,
I hear the saucy minstrels still
In chattering persistence.
Piles round the blue horizon,
Or thunder rolls from hill to hill
A Kyrie Eleison,
Your sparkle is unfading;—
Pied harlequins of June,—no end
Of song and masquerading.
Too quick for bar and rhythm!
What ecstasies, too full to keep
Coherent measure with them!
Or muscadel, your frolic,
The glad delirium of your joy,
Your fun unapostolic,
Your bobolonkish gabble,
Your fine Anacreontic glee,
Your tipsy reveller’s babble!
With similes of folly;
No wine of earth could waken songs
So delicately jolly!
In flying air-born bubbles!
O joy that mocks our sad unrest,
And drowns our earth-born troubles!
Despondency and dullness;
For Good Supreme can never fail
That gives such perfect fullness.
With song and light and color
Will shape our lives to richer states,
And heap our measures fuller.