Ralph Waldo Emerson, comp. (1803–1882). Parnassus: An Anthology of Poetry. 1880.
What the Birds saidJohn Greenleaf Whittier (18071892)
T
Flew northward, singing as they flew;
They sang, “The land we leave behind
Has swords for corn-blades, blood for dew.”
What saw and heard ye, gazing down?”
“We saw the mortar’s upturned mouth,
The sickened camp, the blazing town!
We saw your march-worn children die;
In shrouds of moss, in cypress swamps,
We saw your dead uncoffined lie.
And saw, from line and trench, your sons
Follow our flight with home-sick eyes
Beyond the battery’s smoking guns.”
And pain,” I cried, “O wing-worn flocks?”
“We heard,” they sang, “the Freedman’s song,
The crash of Slavery’s broken locks!
The treason-nursing mischief spurned,
As, crowding Freedom’s ample gates,
The long-estranged and lost returned.
And hands horn-hard with unpaid toil,
With hope in every rustling fold,
We saw your star-dropt flag uncoil.
A grateful murmur clomb the air,
A whisper scarcely heard at first,
It filled the listening heavens with prayer.
Replied a voice which shall not cease,
Till, drowning all the noise of war,
It sings the blessed song of peace!”
Of chill and slowly-greening spring,
Low stooping from the cloudy gray,
The wild-birds sang or seemed to sing.
The song went with them in their flight;
But lo! they left the sunset fair,
And in the evening there was light.