On a Bird Winging in its Sleep

A bird half wakened in the lunar noon

Sang half way through its little inborn tune.

Partly because it sang but once all night

And that from no especial bush’s height;

Partly because it sang ventriloquist

And had the inspiration to desist

Almost before the prick of hostile ears,

It ventured less in peril than appears.

It could not have come down to us so far

Through the interstices of things ajar

On the long bead chain of repeated birth

To be a bird while we are men on earth

If singing out of sleep and dream that way

Had made it much more easily a prey.