I was clearing thirty or forty acres once <br />Out in the western range near Nightcap Mountain. <br />And as I was working, I heard a gathering of the crows <br />Singing out in a jungle gully. Their clamorous cries <br />Drawed the attention of all the other birds. <br />Jackass and butcher-bird, soldier-bird, sparrow-bird, <br />Scrub-robin, magpie, and the black and white cockatoo, <br />They all flew down to the crows in the jungle-gully. <br /> <br />And I followed after their clamour, and in the midst <br />Of all the splendid excitement of the birds <br />I heard one feller was singing above them all. <br />It was the lyre-bird, the mimic of all the scrub, <br />And they held this beautiful sermon or half an hour. <br />The birds would stop and listen a while but still <br />That beautiful voice, the lyre-bird, would keep on singing <br />And draw then and join them all to a chorus again. <br /> <br />And as I stood there and listened, the Scriptures was <br />Hitting me all the time. The sermon seemed <br />Like the prophecy when Christ shall come and summon <br />The birds, the valleys, the hills, the mountains and the ocean <br />To sing in praise of the grace and the reckoning day, <br />And the beauty of earth in the splendour that He crated. <br />And I went back and told my people of what I had seen, <br />And the sermon of praise I heard in the mountain range.<br /><br />Roland Robinson<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-sermon-of-the-birds/
