Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, TO AN UPLAND PLOVER, by PERCY MACKAYE


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

TO AN UPLAND PLOVER, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Crescent-wing'd, sky-clean
Last Line: Your wilding mate, o plover!
Alternate Author Name(s): Mackaye, Percy Wallace
Subject(s): Birds


CRESCENT-WING'D, sky-clean
Hermit of pastures wild,
Upland plover, shy-soul'd lover
Of field ways undefiled!
I watch your curve-tipt pinion glean —
Slim as a scythe — the rusty green
Reaches of sweet-fern cover
That slant to your secret glade,
But what you cull with your rhythmic blade
What mortal can discover?

Azure-born, gale-blown
Gull of the billowy hills,
My heart goes forth to see you hover
So far from human sills,
To hear your tweeting, shrill and lone,
Make from the moorgrass such sharp moan
As some unshriven lover,
For you are sorrow-wise
With memory, whose passions rise
Whence no man may discover.

Reticent, rare of song,
Rears the shy soul its pain:
You sought no cottage eave as cover
To dole a dulcet plain;
But swift, on pinions lithe and strong,
You sought a place for your wild wrong
God only might discover,
And there God, calling, came,
And flies with you in His white flame —
Your wilding mate, O plover!





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