Swan, no song

We walked the dogs a little later than usual today. Our adult children are Harry Potter fans so we all went to see "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them." We can't honestly recommend it but neither was it a disaster. If and when there's another like it, we'll check the reviews more carefully before deciding.

Back to the dog walking: it was a blue-sky, sunny afternoon, with a half moon floating up there somewhere. We got to watch a single swan, fairly high up, fly past toward the Southeast, looking as if s/he wanted to find open water. That's a challenge these days. A long, white neck leading a white body propelled by large white wings, with the sun shining on all that whiteness, was a gorgeous sight.

Bone Lake, single swan on the snow

Photo by J. Harrington

Why it was only a single swan, we can't begin to guess. There was a single swan two years ago come December perched on the snow covering Bone Lake. We thought that one might have needed rehabilitation but s/he was gone (without leaving blood on the snow) the next day when we drove past again. Perhaps today's and the one from 2016 were part of the flock that over-Winters on the St. Croix done at Hudson.

Seeing that swan today promptly put us in mind of the poem below. We suspect many of you learned it in grammar school, as we did. We continue to enjoy it from time to time.

To a Waterfowl

By William Cullen Bryant

Whither, 'midst falling dew, 

While glow the heavens with the last steps of day, 

Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue 

Thy solitary way? 

Vainly the fowler’s eye 

Might mark thy distant flight, to do thee wrong, 

As, darkly seen against the crimson sky, 

Thy figure floats along. 

Seek’st thou the plashy brink 

Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide, 

Or where the rocking billows rise and sink 

On the chaféd ocean side? 

There is a Power, whose care 

Teaches thy way along that pathless coast,— 

The desert and illimitable air 

Lone wandering, but not lost. 

All day thy wings have fanned, 

At that far height, the cold thin atmosphere; 

Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land, 

Though the dark night is near. 

And soon that toil shall end, 

Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest, 

And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bend, 

Soon, o’er thy sheltered nest. 

Thou’rt gone, the abyss of heaven 

Hath swallowed up thy form, yet, on my heart 

Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given, 

And shall not soon depart. 

He, who, from zone to zone, 

Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, 

In the long way that I must trace alone, 

Will lead my steps aright.

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