Birds aren't people one has to walk to:
Stay where you are, they'll come to you, talk too.
What's in gadding in search of a neighbour
Far too much distance, much too much labour.
Chat about trifles, argue a season:
Surely you'll find no roots to grow trees on?
The dark, steep, long way back—is it longer?
Wits any wiser, legs any stronger?
Sit them right here in this very place, swayed
By idleness eyeing a fiery parade
Of robins, swallows, thrushes, sparrows,
Coming like lightning, going like arrows.
HERMIT THRUSH
It's hard to count what an air can do:
It cannot buy one a shirt or shoe:
It cannot bind a neat nest; find things
For leaving the earth on floating wings:
Nothing of twigs in it, nothing of roots;
But something of rivers, a little of flutes
That I've heard rippling a bodiless tune
That caught me up in a small balloon,
And took me high without writing a check;
