dots-menu
×

Home  »  Poetry: A Magazine of Verse  »  Owen F. Aldis

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

To a Mocking Bird

Owen F. Aldis

O SINGER of the twilight solitude!

When moss-veiled oaks sigh at my weary dream,

Beside the sullen heron-haunted stream,

Thy laughing voice begins its gay prelude,

Mocking the boding owl with mimic scream;

Then o’er the hushed lagoon the night mists brood,

Till, sudden, throbbing with beatitude,

Rises thy vesper hymn of love supreme.

No old-world myth, no tragic love refrain

Dost thou to everglade and bayou tell;

So joyous is thy high exulting strain

My sad heart wakes to hope beneath the spell.

Faint grows the memory of passion’s pain,

Forgotten is the song of Philomel.