Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,
Birds of Passage — The Herons of Elmwood
(1847)
“ Silent are all the sounds of day; Nothing I hear but the chirp of crickets, And the cry of the herons winging their way O'er the poet's house in the Elmwood thickets.Call to him, herons, as slowly you pass To your roosts in the haunts of the exiled thrushes, Sing him the song of the green morass; And the tides that water the reeds and rushes.Sing him the mystical Song of the Hern, And the secret that baffles our utmost seeking; For only a sound of lament we discern, And cannot interpret the words you are speaking. ”
