If the Lilies Are Down

IF the lilies are down, if the tall lilies are gone,
And no sweet yellow apples lie on the lawn,
Yet in the deep green gloom of the chestnut tree
A vireo, low and meditatively,
Sings to himself, and to a wondering Me.

Always in my mind a child lingers
At the window by the dense green leaves, and fingers
A book, wondering whether the melody
Of a human voice or a vireo would be
Sweetest to have ... a child wonders in me.

I have forgotten to answer the hundred things
The child is asking . . . or is it the bird, that sings
Immortal in its bower in the deep shade,
Fixed in a summer that can never fade,
Where all sunlight gathers, all dews are made?

Whoever questions, child or bird, shall hear
Only an echo, repeated small and clear.
I have only come to question again
What songs are sweetest, the songs of birds or men;
Yet echo changes the question spoken then.

Unanswered questions, questions outliving time,
Grow dear as an old companion, sweet as a rhyme.
Questions we murmur to eternity
Lift us from dust: a timeless self I see
Brooding in the deep shadow of the tree.

Child, I have heard men sing, and they sang well.
They spoke of rapture, melancholy, farewell;
And still their songs had not the innocence
Of a bird’s warbling, that enchants the sense
With a limpid coolness untroubled by pretense.

Yet all our listening is with human ears.
It may be bird-song, cool against our fears,
Airily ringing outside our warmest joys,
Will always, for men, be too remote a voice
To tempt any but the weary to its choice.

If the lake is quiet and the stars are veiled,
And sleep has soothed the little owl that wailed,
I will yet know: outside is the chestnut tree
Where the bird sang, sweet and unceasingly,
To the sheltering leaves, and to the child in me.