Poem: “The Black Birds” by Henry Van Dyke

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American Literature – Children Books – American Poetry – Henry Van Dyke – Poems by Henry Van Dyke
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The Black Birds

I

Once, only once, I saw it clear,—That Eden every human heart has dreamedA hundred times, but always far away!Ah, well do I remember how it seemed,Through the still atmosphereOf that enchanted day,To lie wide open to my weary feet:A little land of love and joy and rest,With meadows of soft green,Rosy with cyclamen, and sweetWith delicate breath of violets unseen,—And, tranquil ‘mid the bloomAs if it waited for a coming guest,A little house of peace and joy and loveWas nested like a snow-white dove.

II

From the rough mountain where I stood,Homesick for happiness,Only a narrow valley and a darkling woodTo cross, and then the long distressOf solitude would be forever past,—I should be home at last.But not too soon! oh, let me linger hereAnd feed my eyes, hungry with sorrow,On all this loveliness, so near,And mine to-morrow!

III

Then, from the wood, across the silvery blue,A dark bird flew,Silent, with sable wings.Close in his wake another came,—Fragments of midnight floating throughThe sunset flame,—Another and another, weaving ringsOf blackness on the primrose sky,—Another, and another, look, a score,A hundred, yes, a thousand rising heavilyFrom that accursed, dumb, and ancient wood,They boiled into the lucid airLike smoke from some deep caldron of despair!And more, and more, and ever more,The numberless, ill-omened broodFlapping their ragged plumes,Possessed the landscape and the evening lightWith menaces and glooms.Oh, dark, dark, dark they hovered o’er the placeWhere once I saw the little house so whiteAmid the flowers, covering every traceOf beauty from my troubled sight,—And suddenly it was night!

IV

At break of day I crossed the wooded vale;And while the morning madeA trembling light among the tree-tops pale,I saw the sable birds on every limb,Clinging together closely in the shade,And croaking placidly their surly hymn.But, oh, the little land of peace and loveThat those night-loving wings had poised above,—Where was it gone?Lost, lost, forevermore!Only a cottage, dull and gray,In the cold light of dawn,With iron bars across the door:Only a garden where the drooping headOf one sad rose, foreboding its decay,Hung o’er a barren bed:Only a desolate field that layUntilled beneath the desolate day,—Where Eden seemed to bloom I found but these!So, wondering, I passed along my way,With anger in my heart, too deep for words,Against that grove of evil-sheltering trees,And the black magic of the croaking birds.

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American Literature – Children Books – American Poetry – Henry Van Dyke – Poems by Henry Van Dyke

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The Black Birds

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