Page:The poetical works of Matthew Arnold, 1897.djvu/502

464 Praised thy golden livery.

Gravely thou the while, poor dear!

Sat'st upon thy perch to hear,

Fixing with a mute regard

Us, thy human keepers hard,

Troubling, with our chatter vain,

Ebb of life, and mortal pain—

Us, unable to divine

Our companion's dying sign,

Or o'erpass the severing sea

Set betwixt ourselves and thee,

Till the sand thy feathers smirch

Fallen dying off thy perch!

Was it, as the Grecian sings,

Birds were born the first of things,

Before the sun, before the wind,

Before the gods, before mankind,

Airy, ante-mundane throng—

Witness their unworldly song!

Proof they give, too, primal powers,

Of a prescience more than ours—

Teach us, while they come and go,

When to sail, and when to sow.

Cuckoo calling from the hill,

Swallow skimming by the mill,

Swallows trooping in the sedge,

Starlings swirling from the hedge,

Mark the seasons, map our year,

As they show and disappear.

But, with all this travail sage

Brought from that anterior age,

Goes an unreversed decree

Whereby strange are they and we;