OUR SINGING STRENGTH
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t snowed in spring on earth so dry and warmThe flakes could find no landing place to form.Hordes spent themselves to make it wet and cold,And still they failed of any lasting hold.They made no white impression on the black.They disappeared as if earth sent them back.Not till from separate flakes they changed at nightTo almost strips and tapes of ragged whiteDid grass and garden ground confess it snowed,And all go back to winter but the road.Next day the scene was piled and puffed and dead.The grass lay flattened under one great tread.Borne down until the end almost took root,The rangey bough anticipated fruitWith snowballs cupped in every opening bud.The road alone maintained itself in mud,Whatever its secret was of greater heatFrom inward fires or brush of passing feet. In spring more mortal singers than belongTo any one place cover us with song.Thrush, bluebird, blackbird, sparrow, and robin throng;Some to go further north to Hudson's Bay,Some that have come too far north back away,Really a very few to build and stay.Now was seen how these liked belated snow.The fields had nowhere left for them to go;They'd soon exhausted all there was in flying;The trees they'd had enough of with once tryingAnd setting off their heavy powder load.They could find nothing open but the road.So there they let their lives be narrowed inBy thousands the bad weather made akin.The road became a channel running flocksOf glossy birds like ripples over rocks.I drove them under foot in bits of flightThat kept the ground, almost disputing rightOf way with me from apathy of wing,A talking twitter all they had to sing.A few I must have driven to despairMade quick asides, but having done in airA whir among white branches great and smallAs in some too much carven marble hallWhere one false wing beat would have brought down all,Came tamely back in front of me, the Drover,To suffer the same driven nightmare over.One such storm in a lifetime couldn't teach themThat back behind pursuit it couldn't reach them;None flew behind me to be left alone. Well, something for a snowstorm to have shownThe country's singing strength thus brought together,That though repressed and moody with the weatherWas none the less there ready to be freedAnd sing the wildflowers up from root and seed.
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