IN the Dean's porch a nest of clay 
 With five small tentants may be seen; 
Five solemn faces, each as wise 
 As if its owner were a Dean. 

Five downy fledglings in a row, 
 Packed close, as in the antique pew 
The school-girls are whose foreheads clear 
 At the Venite shine on you. 

Day after day the swallows sit 
 With scarce a stir, with scarce a sound, 
But dreaming and digesting much 
 They grow thus wise and soft and round: 

They watch the Canons come to dine, 
 And hear, the mullion-bars across, 
Over the fragrant fruit and wine 
 Deep talk of rood-screen and reredos. 

Her hands with field-flowers drenched, a child 
 Leaps past in wind-blown dress and hair, 
The swallows turn their heads askew -- 
 Five judges deem that she is fair. 

Prelusive touches sound within, 
 Straightway they recognise the sign, 
And, blandly nodding, they approve 
 The minuet of Rubinstein. 

They mark the cousins' schoolboy talk, 
 (Male birds flown wide from minster bell), 
And blink at each broad term of art, 
 Binomial or bicycle. 

Ah! downy soft ones, soft and warm, 
 Doth such a stillness mask from sight 
Such swiftness? can such peace conceal 
 Passion and ecstasy of flight? 

Yet somewhere 'mid your Easter suns, 
 Under a white Greek architrave 
At morn, or when the shaft of fire 
 Lies large upon the Indian wave, 

A sense of something dear gone by 
 Will stir, strange longings thrill the heart 
For a small world embowered close, 
 Of which ye sometime were a part. 

The dew-drenched flowers, the child's glad eyes 
 Your joy inhuman shall control, 
And in your wings a light and wind 
 Shall move from the Maestro's soul.