The Bird of the Bastile

Come to my breast, thou lone
And weary bird! — one tone,
Of the rare music of my childhood! Dear
Is that strange sound to me;
Dear is the memory
It brings my soul of many a parted year!

Again, yet once again,
O minstrel of the main!
Lo! festal face, and form familiar, throng
Unto my waking eye;
And voices of the sky
Sing, from these walls of death, unwonted song.

Nay, cease not: I would call
Thus, from the silent hall
Of the unlighted grave, the joys of old:
Beam on me yet once more,
Ye blessed eyes of yore,
Starting life blood through all my being cold.

Ah! cease not; phantoms fair
Fill thick the dungeon's air;
They wave me from its gloom; I fly — I stand
Again upon that spot,
Which ne'er hath been forgot
In all time's tears, my own green, glorious land!

There, on each noon-bright hill,
By fount and flashing rill,
Slowly the faint flocks sought the breezy shade;
There gleamed the sunset's fire,
On the tall tapering spire,
And windows low, along the upland glade.

Sing, sing! — I do not dream —
It is my own blue stream,
I see far down where white walls fleck the vale; —
I know it by the hedge
Of rose-trees at its edge,
Vaunting their crimson beauty to the gale:

There, there, 'mid clustering leaves,
Glimmer my father's eaves,
And the worn threshold of my youth beneath; —
I know them by the moss,
And the old elms that toss
Their lithe arms up where winds the smoke's gray wreath.

Sing, sing! — I am not mad —
Sing! that the visions glad
May smile that smiled, and speak that spake but now;
Sing, sing! — I might have knelt
And prayed; I might have felt
Their breath upon my bosom and my brow.

I might have pressed to this
Cold bosom, in my bliss,
Each long-lost form that ancient hearth beside;
O heaven! I might have heard,
From living lips, one word,
Thou mother of my childhood! and have died.

Nay, nay, 't is sweet to weep,
Ere yet in death I sleep;
It minds me I have been, and am again, —
And the world wakes around
It breaks the madness, bound,
While I have dreamed, these ages on my brain.

And sweet it is to love
Even this gentle dove,
This breathing thing from all life else apart: —
Ah! leave me not the gloom
Of my eternal tomb
To bear alone — alone! Come to my heart,

My bird! — Thou shalt go free
And come, oh come to me
Again, when from the hills the spring-gale blows;
So shall. I learn, at least,
One other year hath ceased —
That the long wo throbs lingering to its close.