- Whither, ’midst falling dew,
- While glow the heavens with the last steps of day,
- Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue
- Thy solitary way?
- Vainly the fowler’s eye
- Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong,
- As, darkly painted on the crimson sky,
- Thy figure floats along.
- Seek’st thou the plashy brink
- Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide,
- Or where the rocking billows rise and sink
- On the chafed ocean side?
- There is a Power whose care
- Teaches thy way along that pathless coast,—
- The desert and illimitable air,—
- Lone wandering, but not lost.
- All day thy wings have fann’d
- At that far height, the cold thin atmosphere:
- Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land,
- Though the dark night is near.
- And soon that toil shall end,
- Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest,
- And scream among thy fellows; reed shall bend
- Soon o’er thy sheltered nest.
- Thou’rt gone, the abyss of heaven
- Hath swallowed up thy form; yet, on my heart
- Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given,
- And shall not soon depart.
- He, who, from zone to zone,
- Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,
- In the long way that I must tread alone,
- Will lead my steps aright.
