  I’ll tell you how the snow-birds come, Here in our Winter days; They make me think of chickens, With their cunning little ways. birds in snow We go to bed at night, and leave The ground all bare and brown, And not a single snow-bird But when we wake at morning The ground with snow is white, And with the snow, the snow-birds Must have travelled all the night; For the streets and yards are full of them, The dainty little things, With snow-white breasts, and soft brown heads, And speckled russet wings. Not here and there a snow-bird, As we see them at the East, But in great flocks, like grasshoppers, By hundreds, at the least, They push and crowd and jostle, And twitter as they feed, And hardly lift their heads up, For fear to miss a seed. What ’tis they eat, nobody seems To know or understand; The seeds are much too fine to see, But winds last Summer scattered them, All thickly on these plains; The little snow-birds have no barns, But God protects their grains. . . . . . . . Some flocks count up to thousands, I know, and when they fly, Their tiny wings make rustle, As if a wind went by. They go as quickly as they come, Go in a night or day; Soon as the snow has melted off, The darlings fly away, But come again, again, again, All winter with each snow; Brave little armies, through the cold; Swift back and forth they go. I always wondered where they lived I stumbled on them in their home, High in the upper air; ’Way up among the clouds it was, A many thousand feet, But on the mountain-side gay flowers Were blooming fresh and sweet. birds on ground in forest Great pine trees’ swaying branches Gave cool and fragrant shade; And here, we found, the snow-birds “Oh, lucky little snow-birds!” We said, “to know so well, In summer time and winter time, Your destined place to dwell— “To journey, nothing doubting, Down to the barren plains, Where harvests are all over, To find your garnered grains! “Oh, precious little snow-birds! If we were half as wise, If we were half as trusting To the Father in the skies,— “He would feed us, though the harvests Had ceased throughout the land, And hold us, all our lifetime, In the hollow of his hand!” —Helen Hunt Jackson. |
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