'Within a mile o' Edinburgh toon,'
Beneath the gray of an afternoon,
When the wind was bleak in its blowing,
He sang from the top of a leafless tree
A song of hope and of spring to be,
And of flowers by the pathways growing.
The gray of the sky that was overhead,
Lay like a veil of the colour of lead
On the Pentland hills before me;
It touched the hills beyond the Forth,
It was east and west, and south and north,
And to pensive sadness bore me.
I thought if I could flutter a wing,
Like that glorious bird, and try to sing,
My note would be one of sorrow;
It would ring with the pain of things that die,
Of the dreams that pass and the hopes that fly,
Of the night and not of the morrow.
But he—he sang when no leaf was seen,
When the hedges had never a breath of green
To hint where the buds would be springing.
Thou fool! he was all to himself and strong,
And though there was summer far down in his song,
He sang for the sake of the singing.