AH! swallows, is it so? <br />Did loving lingering summer, whose slow pace <br />Tarried among late blossoms, loth to go, <br />Gather the darkening cloud-wraps round her face <br />And weep herself away in last week's rain? <br />Can no new sunlight waken her again? <br />'Yes,' one pale rose a-blow <br />Has answered from the trellised lane; <br />The flickering swallows answer 'No.' <br /> <br />From out the dim grey sky <br />The arrowy swarm breaks forth and specks the air, <br />While, one by one, birds wheel and float and fly, <br />And now are gone, then suddenly are there; <br />Till lo, the heavens are empty of them all. <br />Oh, fly, fly south, from leaves that fade and fall, <br />From shivering flowers that die; <br />Free swallows, fly from winter's thrall, <br />Ye who can give the gloom good-bye. <br /> <br />But what for us who stay <br />To hear the winds and watch the boughs grow black, <br />And in the soddened mornings, day by day, <br />Count what lost sweets bestrew the nightly track <br />Of frost-foot winter trampling towards his throne? <br />Swallows, who have the sunlight for your own, <br />Fly on your sunward way; <br />For you has January buds new blown, <br />For us the snows and gloom and grey. <br /> <br />On, on, beyond our reach, <br />Swallows, with but your longing for a guide: <br />Let the hills rise, let the waves tear the beach, <br />Ye will not balk your course nor turn aside, <br />But find the palms and twitter in the sun. <br />And well for them whose eager wings have won <br />The longed for goal of flight; <br />But what of them in twilights dun <br />Who long, but have no wings for flight?<br /><br />Augusta Davies Webster<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-swallows-3/
