I Heard A Bell-Bird Sing.

Fluted sweetly a hidden bird,
With rapture in its throat,
And cadences, like beauty stirred,
Came trilling, note on note.
Followed my happy heart along,
Threading the leafy way,
To capture the strange, enchanted
song, The airy roundelay.
‘Neath mingled greens and sunset bars,
The lilting pathway lay,
Where night sky spilled her downy stars,
Upon the Milky Way.
I searched o'er rocks and dancing rills,
Beside the breakers' spray,
Where clouds played with the violet hills;
And heard no more the lay.
O song no mortal can detain,
Vanished on morning's beam,
Your limpid notes I found again,
In fabric of a dream.

—Phyllis I. Young.

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