Hark! Can you hear the song of the breeze
Bubbling about in play;
Climbing the steps of the blackbird’s trill;
Chattering with the jay?
Tossing aside a sun-bleached thatch
Roofing a weathered tan
Driving a tractor over the fields
Growing the food of man?

Plugging the ear with a billet of sound
Riding on ponderous wheels
Dragging behind, in lieu of a tail
An ungreased axle’s squeals?
Spray from its thin extended arms
(Light as the kiss of rain)
Falling on growing stalks of corn;
On unborn ears of grain.

Death to the minute things that crawl;
To the maggot; to the fly
Lies on the green potato haulms;
On the barley and the rye:
Death to the merry music comes
Choked in the robin’s throat;
Sealing the fluted call of the thrush
Still, in its speckled coat.

Hark! Can you hear the song of the breeze
Sighing a funeral dirge;
Sad for the fallow nests and holes
Which fell to the showery scourge;
Gone from the thicket screen?
Hush! Can’t you hear the toll of the bell
And the leper’s cry – UNCLEAN?