Ah me, though never an ear for song, thou hast A tireless tooth for songsters: thus of late Thou camest, Death, thou Cat! and leap'st my gate, And, long ere Love could follow, thou hadst passed Within and snatched away, how fast, how fast, My bird--wit, songs, and all--thy richest freight Since that fell time when in some wink of fate Thy yellow claws unsheathed and stretched, and cast Sharp hold on Keats, and dragged him slow away, And harried him with hope and horrid play-- Ay, him, the world's best wood-bird, wise with song-- Till thou hadst wrought thine own last mortal wrong. 'Twas wrong! 'twas wrong! I care not, _wrong's_ the word-- To munch our Keats and crunch our mocking-bird. III Nay, Bird; my grief gainsays the Lord's best right. The Lord was fain, at some late festal time, That Keats should set all Heaven's woods in rhyme, And thou in bird-notes. Lo, this tearful night, Methinks I see thee, fresh from death's despite, Perched in a palm-grove, wild with pantomime, O'er blissful companies couched in shady thyme, --Methinks I hear thy silver whistlings bright Mix with the mighty discourse of the wise, Till broad Beethoven, deaf no more, and Keats, 'Midst of much talk, uplift their smiling eyes, And mark the music of thy wood-conceits, And halfway pause on some large, courteous word, And call thee "Brother," O thou heavenly Bird! Baltimore, 1878. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Bob, by Sidney Lanier