Katharine Lee Bates - To a Crow lyrics

Come hither, taunted bird, and I will stroke Thy ruffled plumage with a verse, O triste And sombre minstrel at our Twelfth Night feast, A music masquerading in thy croak. How often, when the wild March mornings broke, Have I descried thee, like a demon priest, Heaping hoarse curses on the riotous East From the bare branches of some tossing oak! Yet ever welcome is thy wizard flight, --Most welcome now, when Earth lies imaging The sleep of d**h beneath a winding-sheet Of frozen snow intolerably white, A pallid waste crossed by the sudden, fleet, Beautiful shadow of thy sable wing.