Warm and still is the summer night, <br />As here by the river's brink I wander; <br />White overhead are the stars, and white <br />The glimmering lamps on the hillside yonder. <br /> <br />Silent are all the sounds of day; <br />Nothing I hear but the chirp of crickets, <br />And the cry of the herons winging their way <br />O'er the poet's house in the Elmwood thickets. <br /> <br />Call to him, herons, as slowly you pass <br />To your roosts in the haunts of the exiled thrushes, <br />Sing him the song of the green morass; <br />And the tides that water the reeds and rushes. <br /> <br />Sing him the mystical Song of the Hern, <br />And the secret that baffles our utmost seeking; <br />For only a sound of lament we discern, <br />And cannot interpret the words you are speaking. <br /> <br />Sing of the air, and the wild delight <br />Of wings that uplift and winds that uphold you, <br />The joy of freedom, the rapture of flight <br />Through the drift of the floating mists that infold you. <br /> <br />Of the landscape lying so far below, <br />With its towns and rivers and desert places; <br />And the splendor of light above, and the glow <br />Of the limitless, blue, ethereal spaces. <br /> <br />Ask him if songs of the Troubadours, <br />Or of Minnesingers in old black-letter, <br />Sound in his ears more sweet than yours, <br />And if yours are not sweeter and wilder and better. <br /> <br />Sing to him, say to him, here at his gate, <br />Where the boughs of the stately elms are meeting, <br />Some one hath lingered to meditate, <br />And send him unseen this friendly greeting; <br /> <br />That many another hath done the same, <br />Though not by a sound was the silence broken; <br />The surest pledge of a deathless name <br />Is the silent homage of thoughts unspoken.<br /><br />Henry Wadsworth Longfellow<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-herons-of-elmwood-birds-of-passage-flight-the-fifth/
