![]() He had loved, but now “we two together no more. ![]() Every shadow seemed to the bird the hoped-for shape of his mate reappearing. The bird’s lament, or “aria,” affected the boy deeply. One day the female disappeared, “may-be kill’d, unknown to her mate.” The male anxiously awaited her, He addressed the wind: “I wait and I wait till you blow my mate to me.” His song penetrated the heart of the curious boy who “treasur’d every note for he understood the meaning of the bird, whom he called his “brother.” The experience he now recalls is that on the Paumanok seashore one May, when lilacs were in bloom, he observed two mockingbirds, “feather’d guests from Alabama.” The female crouch’d on her nest, silent,” and the male went “to and fro near at hand.” The birds sang of their love the words “two together” summed up their existence. He is a man now but “by these tears a little boy again,” and he throws himself on the shore “confronting the waves.” He is a “chanter of pains and joys, uniter of here and hereafter,” and he uses all his experiences but goes beyond them. He recalls that as a child, he left his bed and “wander’d alone, bareheaded, barefoot” in search of the mystery of life and death. ![]() ![]() Out of the ceaselessly rocking cradle of the sea waves, a memory comes back to the poet. ![]()
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