THE GREAT BLUE HERON; A WARNING by CELIA LEIGHTON THAXTER

The great blue heron stood all alone
by the edge of the solemn sea
on a broken boulder of gray trap stone.
He was lost in a reverie.

And when I climbed the low rough wall
at the top of the sloping beach
to gather the driftwood great and small
left scattered to dry and bleach,

I saw, as if carved from the broken block
on which he was standing, the bird
like a part of the boulder of blue-gray rock,
for never a feather he stirred.

I paused to watch him. Below my breath:
"Oh beautiful creature," I cried,
"Do you know you are standing here close to your death,
by the brink of the quiet tide?

You cannot know of the being called Man!
The lord of creation is he,
and he slays all earth's creatures wherever he can
in the air or the land or the sea.

He's not a hospitable friend. If he sees
some wonderful, beautiful thing
that runs in the woodland, or floats in the breeze
on the banner-like breadth of its wing,

straight he goes for his gun, its sweet life to destroy
for mere pleasure of killing alone.
He will ruin its beauty and quench all its joy
though tis useless to him as a stone."

Then I cried aloud, "Fly, before over the sand
this lord of creation arrives
with his shot and his powder and gun in his hand
for the spoiling of innocent lives."

O, stately and graceful and slender and tall
the heron stood silent and still
as if careless of warning and deaf to my call—
unconscious of danger or ill.

"Fly! Fly to some lonelier place and fly fast,
to the very North Pole—anywhere!"
Then he rose and soared high, and swept eastward at last
trailing long legs and wings in the air.

"Now perhaps you may live and be happy," I said.
"Sail away, beauty, fast as you can.
Put the width of the earth and the breadth of the sea
betwixt you and the being called Man."

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

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