THE SINGING GARDEN

The English Blackbird

Sweet singer of an older land;
      Thro’ countless centuries
  A greener and a colder land
      Loved well by melodies;
  And with her venturers came I
  To seek beneath a sunny sky
  A home, and croon my lullaby
      Amid these alien trees.

No  interloper, scorning here
      The unfamiliar way;
  No exile, ever mourning here
      Joys of an older day;
  The feathered folk have welcomed me
  Into their joyous company
  To join their chorus, fluting free
      My ever liquid lay.

At  dawning and at evening
      Up from the gully floats
  My song, a gentle leavening
      To wilder woodland notes—
  Up from the gully ’mid the gums
  Where mountain torrents roll their drums
  I join the chorusing that comes
      From twice a hundred throats.

Alien no longer, merrily
      My melodies I’ve brought;
  The bushland offers cheerily
      The sanctu’ry I’ve sought.
  And, where the swift creek sings and turns
  ’Mid wattle-trees and nodding ferns,
  My brood awakens and relearns
      The songs old England taught.