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John Greenleaf Whittier - What the Birds Said
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The birds against the April wind 
    Flew northward, singing as they flew; 
They sang, "The land we leave behind 
    Has swords for corn-blades, blood for dew."  
"O wild-birds, flying from the South, 
    What saw and heard ye, gazing down?" 
"We saw the mortar`s upturned mouth, 
    The sickened camp, the blazing town!  
"Beneath the bivouac`s starry lamps, 
   We saw your march-worn children die; 
In shrouds of moss, in cypress swamps, 
   We saw your dead uncoffined lie.  

"We heard the starving prisoner`s sighs 
   And saw, from line and trench, your sons 
Follow our flight with home-sick eyes 
   Beyond the battery`s smoking guns."  

"And heard and saw ye only wrong 
   And pain," I cried, "O wing-worn flocks?" 
"We heard," they sang, "the freedman`s song, 
   The crash of Slavery`s broken locks!  

"We saw from new, uprising States 
   The treason-nursing mischief spurned, 
As, crowding Freedom`s ample gates, 
   The long-estranged and lost returned.  

"O`er dusky faces, seamed and old, 
   And hands horn-hard with unpaid toil, 
With hope in every rustling fold, 
   We saw your star-dropt flag uncoil.  

"And struggling up through sounds accursed, 
   A grateful murmur clomb the air; 
A whisper scarcely heard at first, 
   It filled the listening heavens with prayer.  

"And sweet and far, as from a star, 
   Replied a voice which shall not cease, 
Till, drowning all the noise of war, 
   It sings the blessed song of peace!"  

So to me, in a doubtful day 
   Of chill and slowly greening spring, 
Low stooping from the cloudy gray, 
   The wild-birds sang or seemed to sing.  

They vanished in the misty air, 
   The song went with them in their flight; 
But lo! they left the sunset fair, 
   And in the evening there was light.
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