Chanting low your vesper hymns,

Never tiring,

Me inspiring,

Seated ’neath the swaying limbs,

Do you know your plaintive calling,

When the summer dew is falling,

Echoes sweeter through my brain

Than any soft, harmonic strain?

Others call you an intruder,

Say discordant notes you know;

Or that sadness,

More than gladness,

From your little heart doth flow;

And that you awake from sleeping

Thoughts in quiet they were keeping,

Faithless love, or ill-laid schemes,

Hopes unanchored—broken dreams.

No such phantoms to my vision

Doth your lullaby impart,

But sweet faces,

No tear traces,

Smile as joyous in my heart,

As when first at mother’s knee

Learned I your sweet mystery.

I defend you with my praises,

For your song my soul upraises.

Do you wonder that at twilight

Always by my cottage door

I am seated?

You’ve repeated

Oft’ner still those tunes of yore;

And I love them, love your scanning

And your noisy tree-top planning;

Though you struggle with a rhyme,

In due season comes the chime.

Oft I fancy when your neighbors,

In some secret thicket hid,

Are debating,

Underrating

What that little maiden did,

That above their clam’rous singing

I can hear your accents ringing,

Like a voice that must defend

From abuse some time-loved friend.

Though the nightingale and swallow

Through the poet’s measures sing,

No reflection

Of dejection

Petrifies or palls your wing.

In the calm and holy moonlight,

On and on with hours of midnight,

In the darkness, in the rain,

Still you whisper your refrain.

Dream I not of fame or fortune,

Only this I inward crave,

Sweet assurance,

Long endurance,

Of a love beyond the grave.

Should my songs die out and perish,

You’ll my name repeat and cherish;

Though all trace is lost of me,

Still you’ll call from tree to tree,