Why, throstle, do you sing

In this November haze?

Singing for what? for whom?

Deem you that it is Spring,

Or that your lonely lays

Will stave off Winter’s gloom?

Then did the bird reply:

“I sing because I know

That Spring will surely come:

That is the reason why,

Though menaced by the snow,

Even now I am not dumb.

“But few are they that hear,

And fewer still that feel,

The meaning of my song,

Until the note be clear,

Re-echoed be the peal,

Early, and late, and long.

“But you have heard and owned

The sound of my refrain,

Yet tentative and low.

Thus, poet, be intoned

Your own foreshadowing strain,

Trusting that some will know:

“That some will know and say,

When greetings of the Spring

Wake Winter from its bed,

This is the self-same lay

We overheard him sing

When dead hearts deemed him dead.”