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Poetry Gallery
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71
To the Lapland Longspur.
Oh, thou northland bobolink
 Looking over summer's brink
Up to winter, and dim,
 Peering down from mountain rim
Peering out on Behring sea
 To higher lands, where he may flee -
Something takes me in thy note,
 quivering wings, and bubbling throat ;
Something moves me in thy ways,
 Bird rejoicing in thy days
In thy upward hovering flight
  In thy suit of black and white -
 Chestnut cape and circled crown
    Surely I may pause and think
    Of my boyhood's bobolink.
Soaring over meadows wild
 (greener pastures never smiled)
Raining music from above
 Full of rapture, full of love,
Frolic, gay and debonair
 Yet not all exempt from care,
For thy nest is in the grass
 And thou worriest, as I pass.
But no hand on foot of mind
 Shall do harm to thee and thine
    I musing only pause to think
    Of my boyhood's bobolink.
But no bobolink of mine
  Ever sang o'er meads so fine;-
Starred with flowers of every hue
  Gold and purple, white and blue
Painted cup, [?]
  Jacob's ladder, fleur-de-lis,
Orchid, barebell, shooting star
  Crane's bill, lupline seen afar,
Primrose, rubus, saxifrage -
  Pictured type in Nature's page
These and more here unnamed,
  In northland garden yet untamed -
   Deck the fields where thou don't sing
    Mounting up, on trembling wing.
     Still, I can but pause and think
     Of my boyhood's bobolink.
[Written vertically]
On Unalaska's queer old lea,
On lovely isles in Behring sea,
  On far Siberia's barren shore
  On North Alaska's tundra floor,
   At morn, at noon, in pallid night,
   We heard thy song, and saw thy flight,
     While I, sighing, could but think
     Of my boyhood's Bobolink
Unalaska, July 18th 1899.
John Burroughs
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