FullReads

In the hush of the drowsy afternoon,
When the very wind on the breast of June
Lies settled, and hot white tracery
Of the shattered sunlight filters free.
Through the unstinted leaves to the pied cool sward;
On a dead tree branch sings the saddest bard
Of the birds that be;
‘Tis the lone Pewee.

Its note is a sob, and its note is pitched
In a single key, like a soul bewitched
To a mournful minstrelsy.

“Pewee, Pewee,” doth it ever cry;
A sad, sweet minor threnody
That threads the aisles of the dim hot grove
Like a tale of a wrong or a vanished love;
And the fancy comes that the wee dun bird
Perchance was a maid, and her heart was stirred

By some lover’s rhyme
In a golden time,

And broke when the world turned false and cold;
And her dreams grew dark and her faith grew cold
In some fairy far-off clime.

And her soul crept into the Pewee’s breast;
And forever she cries with a strange unrest
For something lost, in the afternoon;
For something missed from the lavish June;
For the heart that died in the long ago;
For the livelong pain that pierceth so:

Thus the Pewee cries,
While the evening lies

Steeped in the languorous still sunshine,
Rapt, to the leaf and the bough rind the vine
Of some hopeless paradise.
“You can tell your paper,” the great man said,
“I refused an interview.
I have nothing to say on the question, sir;
Nothing to say to you.”

And then he talked till the sun went down
And the chickens went to roost;
And he seized the collar of the poor young man,
And never his hold he loosed.

And the sun went down and the moon came up,
And he talked till the dawn of day;
Though he said, “On this subject mentioned by you,
I have nothing whatever to say.”

And down the reporter dropped to sleep
And flat on the floor he lay;
And the last he heard was the great man’s words,
“I have nothing at all to say.”