Upon a bough, in a neglected spot,
I heard a thrush to-day
Pour wondrous minor music from his throat
To chase some grief away.
I stopped to ask him of his sorrow’s cause,
As questioning a child
That weeps and weeps, without a single pause
Save to make cries more wild.
Intenser far was each successive plaint
Than that he last had made,
As if he were resolved whole worlds to acquaint
With grief his soul down-weighed.
I tried to understand the things he said –
I would his heart console ;
Yet, though I caught of meaning many a shred,
I failed to guess the whole.
Once seemed it he would voice the mood of earth-
There shone no sun, no rain
Did woo the budding leaves to birth,
No breeze from hill or plain.
So sad he sang as he the pains did feel
Of all the throes of Spring,
That from the weight of hoary Winter’s heel
Sought hard her issuing.
Or now again upon the silent air
His sweetest notes would rise,
Like love’s old songs on waters fair
That sleep ‘neath moonlit skies.
But then a change, as he did quite despair
Of finding any mate ;
For of his kind no sound or trace was there
His sorrow to abate.
To tell precisely what lay on his heart
Were outside human power ;
Hut this I know, by some instinctive art,
He sang in his dark hour.
In such an hour as sometimes falls at e’en
Upon ourselves depressed ;
When lonely, brooding, memory’s shafts are keen
And eyes look towards the West.
Like you, dear bird, we mortals ever have
Made sweet with sad unite ;
And though to you a wondrous voice Pan gave.
He hath not left us quite.
We touch some instrument we’ve learnt to play
In the dream hours gone by ;
We raise some old emotion of a day
That’s past irrevocably.
We draw upon a heart that felt of yore,
And in sad melody
Make present feast from pleasure’s garnered store
To drown the cares that be.
(Charles Granville)
More Poetry from Charles Granville:
Charles Granville Poems based on Topics: Spring, Sadness, Birds, Dreams, Memory, Grief, Birth, Change, Art- The Poets Suit: A Fragment (Charles Granville Poems)
- A Western-World Man's Confession (Charles Granville Poems)
- The Vale Of Ghosts (Charles Granville Poems)
- Chopin At Twilight (Charles Granville Poems)
- The Copse: A Simile (Charles Granville Poems)
- 1st May, 1908 (Charles Granville Poems)
Readers Who Like This Poem Also Like:
Based on Topics: Sadness Poems, Dreams Poems, Art Poems, Birds Poems, Spring Poems, Grief Poems, Memory Poems, Change Poems, Birth PoemsBased on Keywords: intenser, instinctive, acquaint, irrevocably