The Unknown Bird
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HREE lovely notes he whistled, too soft to be heardIf others sang; but others never sangIn the great beech-wood all that May and June.No one saw him: I alone could hear himThough many listened. Was it but four yearsAgo? or five? He never came again. Oftenest when I heard him I was alone,Nor could I ever make another hear.La-la-la! he called, seeming far-off--As if a cock crowed past the edge of the world,As if the bird or I were in a dream.Yet that he travelled through the trees and some- timesNeared me, was plain, though somehow distant stillHe sounded. All the proof is--I told menWhat I had heard. I never knew a voice,Man, beast, or bird, better than this. I toldThe naturalists; but neither had they heardAnything like the notes that did so haunt me,I had them clear by heart and have them still.Four years, or five, have made no difference. ThenAs now that La-la-la! was bodiless sweet:Sad more than joyful it was, if I must sayThat it was one or other, but if sad'Twas sad only with joy too, too far offFor me to taste it. But I cannot tellIf truly never anything but fairThe days were when he sang, as now they seem.This surely I know, that I who listened then,Happy sometimes, sometimes sufferingA heavy body and a heavy heart,Now straightway, if I think of it, becomeLight as that bird wandering beyond my shore.
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