What a twitter! what a tumult! what a whirr of wheeling wings!
Birds of Passage hear the message which the Equinoctial brings.
Birds of Passage hear the message and beneath the flying clouds,
Mid the falling leaves of autumn, congregate in clamorous crowds.
Shall they venture on the voyage? are the nestlings fledged for flight;
Fit to face the fluctuant storm-winds and the elemental night?
What a twitter! what a tumult! to the wild wind’s marching song
Multitudinous Birds of Passage round the cliffs of England throng.
And o’er tempest-trodden Ocean, cloud-entangled day and night,
Birds on birds, in corporate motion, wing a commonwealth in flight.
Waves, like hollow graves beneath them, hoarsely howling, yawn for prey;
And the welkin glooms above them shifting formless, grey in grey.
And across the Bay of Biscay on undaunted wing they flee,
Where mild seas move musically murmuring of the Odyssey;
Where the gurgling whirlpools glitter and by soft Circean Straits,
Fell Charybdis lies in ambush, and the ravenous Scylla waits;
Where a large Homeric laughter lingers in the echoing caves,
And in playful exultation Dolphins leap from dimpling waves;
Where, above the fair Sicilian, flock-browsed, flower-pranked meadows, looms
(Mathilde Blind)
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Based on Topics: Night Poems, Fairness Poems, Birds Poems, Autumn Poems, Flying Poems, England Poems, Corporation PoemsBased on Keywords: congregate, scylla, charybdis, homeric, equinoctial, circean, biscay, fluctuant, odyssey, tempest-trodden