The Complete Poems of Francis Ledwidge/Songs of the Fields/To a Linnet in a Cage
TO A LINNET IN A CAGE
When Spring is in the fields that stained your wing,
And the blue distance is alive with song,
And finny quiets of the gabbling spring
Rock lilies red and long,
At dewy daybreak, I will set you free
In ferny turnings of the woodbine lane,
Where faint-voiced echoes leave and cross in glee
The hilly swollen plain.
In draughty houses you forget your tune,
The modulator of the changing hours,
You want the wide air of the moody noon.
And the slanting evening showers.
So I will loose you, and your song shall fall
When morn is white upon the dewy pane,
Across my eyelids, and my soul recall
From worlds of sleeping pain.