Too Fine for Mortal Ear

“ HEARD melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter,” sang a poet dreamer well:
And somewhere in Arabia lives a bird
Whose little throat seems evermore to swell
With music, while her tender golden tongue
Throbs in its parted beak as if she sung,
Though ne’er by sound the brooding air is stirred
Save when on almond-trees she folds her wings.
Yet men do follow her, and cry, “ She sings;
Yea, alway sings, bad we but ears to hear.”
And when across the vacant morning clear
Her rare and rapturous melody she flings,
“ Ah God,” they cry, low listening ’neath her tree,
“How ravishing sweet the unheard notes must be!”

Helen Barron Bostwick.