Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, TO A MOCKING-BIRD, by WILLIAM ALEXANDER PERCY


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

TO A MOCKING-BIRD, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Thy taunting happiness
Last Line: Beareth the blue, homeric, star-entangled tide!
Subject(s): Grief; Happiness; Hearts; Mockingbirds; Sappho (610-580 B.c.); Tears; Sorrow; Sadness; Joy; Delight


Thy taunting happiness,
Thy overbold upflashing bliss,
Pierces my heart to-night, O mocking-bird!
Beneath the limpid surge of darkness,
The awe of stars and all the hush,
Thou flingest far thy little joy, unawed --
Flushed with some momentary triumph,
Or stray, delicious whim.
The tumult of thy silver mockery
Shakes through the trees, across the tranced lawn,
And rouses weariness to pain within my heart.
Cease, cease thy rapture!
To-night the courage and the joy are gone;
I would forget the battles and the ceaseless clash,
The long, rewardless surge of strife,
The race run and no laurels,
The fight fought and no guerdon.
To-night, only to-night, 'tis sweet
No more to buffet with the winds of grief
But bend to them, luxuriously abandoned.
Again the light notes leap
In gusts of gaiety!
Ah, bird, thy song, derisive of defeat
And age and the inevitable doom,
Is but the song of mine own people --
The conquerors, the unafraid --
And thou, in thy bright arrogance and fearless bliss
Summest the spirit of a newer age,
The unprophetic confidence
Of this new-sinewed western world.

Cease, cease thy song of triumph and unwisdom!
To-night I long to hear an alien sweetness that
Long vision hath made sad.
Oh, for a silver-steeped garden overseas,
Hung with too poignant perfumes,
Where thy frail sister lifts her piteous cry,
Her little hidden cry,
Sharp with a hundred centuries of pain,
Hurt with the constant woe,
The weariness and all the tears
Of generations that have gone, darkly!
Oh, to forget this western flaunt of living!
To breathe in those far lands that air
Breathed by dreamers dead, lovely and purposeless;
To hear the anguished nightingale that Sappho heard;
To see beneath the moon the olive trees
And cypresses asleep, as when Antinous,
With eastern-scented brows and poppy lids
Looked forth, godlike, upon them;
To catch, perhaps, -- the myrtle boughs between --
Glimpse of that unforgettable, sweet sea
That heard of yore Sicilian shepherd boys
Piping across their shining pastures,
That still, upon the shores of Ithaca,
Beareth the blue, Homeric, star-entangled tide!





Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!


Other Poems of Interest...
Home: PoetryExplorer.net