In spring more mortal singers than belong To any one place cover us with song. Thrush, bluebird, blackbird, sparrow, and robin throng; Some to go further north to Hudson’s Bay, Some that have come too far north back away, Really a very few to build and stay. Now was seen how these liked belated snow. The fields had nowhere left for them to go; They’d soon exhausted all there was in flying; The trees they’d had enough of with once trying And setting off their heavy powder load. They could find nothing open but the road. So there they let their lives be narrowed in By thousands the bad weather made akin. The road became a channel running flocks Of glossy birds like ripples over rocks. I drove them under foot in bits of flight That kept the ground, almost disputing right Of way with me from apathy of wing, A talking twitter all they had to sing. A few I must have driven to despair Made quick asides, but having done in air A whir among white branches great and small As in some too much carven marble hall Where one false wing beat would have brought down all, Came tamely back in front of me, the Drover, To suffer the same driven nightmare over. One such storm in a lifetime couldn’t teach them That back behind pursuit it couldn’t reach them; None flew behind me to be left alone. Well, something for a snowstorm to have shown The country’s singing strength thus brought together, That though repressed and moody with the weather Was none the less there ready to be freed And sing the wildflowers up from root and seed. THE LOCKLESS DOOR It went many years, But at last came a knock, And I thought of the door With no lock to lock. I blew out the light, I tip-toed the floor, And raised both hands In prayer to the door. But the knock came again. My window was wide; I climbed on the sill And descended outside. Back over the sill I bade a “Come in” To whatever the knock At the door may have been. So at a knock I emptied my cage To hide in the world And alter with age. _THE NEED OF BEING VERSED IN COUNTRY THINGS_ _The house had gone to bring again To the midnight sky a sunset glow. Now the chimney was all of the house that stood, Like a pistil after the petals go._ _The barn opposed across the way, That would have joined the house in flame Had it been the will of the wind, was left To bear forsaken the place’s name._ _No more it opened with all one end For teams that came by the stony road To drum on the floor with scurrying hoofs And brush the mow with the summer load._ _The birds that came to it through the air At broken windows flew out and in, Their murmur more like the sigh we sigh From too much dwelling on what has been._