The Matin-Song of Friar Tuck

by: Alfred Noyes (Author)

from: The New Morning and Other Poems (Pp. 103 - 104)  1918

                           I.
If souls could sing to heaven's high King
    As blackbirds pipe on earth,
   How those delicious courts would ring
  With gusts of lovely mirth!
What white-robed throng could lift a song
 So mellow with righteous glee
As this brown bird that all day long
 Delights my hawthorn tree.
     Hark! That's the thrush
      With speckled breast
     From yon white bush
      Chaunting his best,
  Te Deum! Te Deum laudamus!

                           II.
If earthly dreams be touched with gleams
  Of Paradisal air,
Some wings, perchance, of earth may glance
  Around our slumbers there;
Some breaths of may might drift our way
  With scents of leaf and loam,
Some whistling bird at dawn be heard
  From those old woods of home.
     Hark! That's the thrush
      With speckled breast
     From yon white bush
       Chaunting his best,
   Te Deum! Te Deum laudamus!

                           III.
No King or priest shall mar my feast
  Where'er my soul may range.
I have no fear of heaven's good cheer
   Unless our Master change.
But when death's night is dying away,
  If I might choose my bliss,
My love should say, at break of day,
  With her first waking kiss:--
     Hark! That's the thrush
      With speckled breast,
     From yon white bush
       Chaunting his best,
   Te Deum! Te Deum laudamus!