William Cullen Bryant,
Poems — To a Waterfowl
(1821)
“ 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 ”
