The brooding birds are singing, love,
And waking up the morn,
And me they wake from troubled sleep
To weep and pray,—to pray and weep.
A little thrush that tried her wings
A year agone to-day,
Now sits beside her mate, who sings
While you are far away.
A lithe green bough was rocking then
Beneath her trembling feet;
Now all the old year's leaves are dead,
But three are spread to make her bed.
Oh, withered hopes! Oh, leaves of life!
Ye none again may find,—

Ye all are trampled in the strife,
Or blown upon the wind.
How strange, my heart, that singing birds
Should only know one song:
Of heaven and earth in one green glade,
Within its shade—one youth, one maid!
The birds remind me, singing thus,
Of one sweet summer's dawn
That never should have come for us,
Or never should have gone.
So loud the copse was ringing love
That day, we could not speak;
But there is utterance far more sweet
In lips that meet when hearts so beat!
And still the birds are singing, love,—
Oh, happy birds, give o'er!
I listen like the mourning dove,—
I cannot hear them more.
I wander, like the lonely dove
To find an empty nest;
And if your spirit linger there,
Still, love, I dare to find all bare!
They mock me now, those singing birds
That twitter overhead,—
They mock me with the very words
That then were left unsaid.
The air grows heavy with their song,
Too thick with sound to breathe.
I weep, I weep, but cannot pray,—
Oh, birds, ye sing my soul away!