Opals (Custance)/The Song Bird

by Olive Custance

The Song Bird

 

There is a garden in my soul,
A garden full of singing birds,
Their wings have never known control
In any cage of words.

They come from fairy lands afar,
From lands of Dawn and lands of Night,
The mystic birds of fate they are:
God only marks their flight.

Their wings beat round my house of Dreams,
Beneath the eaves they build and sing . . .
And always each one's coming seems
A strange and sudden thing!

And yesterday, ah! . . . yesterday
I flung a golden net of thought
Across the tangled world that lay
About me, and I caught

A song-bird with a shining crest . . .
And plumage coloured like a flame—
A stranger, different from the rest . . .
I knew from whence he came . . .

From that grey city fair indeed
To some . . . but foul to those, too wise
Who pass her Sphinx-like smile, to read
The secret in her eyes . . .

And this bird sang a song that set
My heart a-thrill with hope and power.
Earth's fruitless feverish care and fret
Fell from me in that hour.

"O! come again! my soul is stirred—
The praise and perfume of the Spring
Is in thy voice, O! passionate bird
Come back to me and sing!"