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this?
                             The blessed birds of God —
                             Silent and orderly, row on row,
    Thick on the branches, scholarwise on the grass —
    Sparrows and swallows, bobolinks and larks —
    Tiny and big, and gay- and hempen-gowned —
        Attentive all and silent; eyes on me —
        Littlest children, my brothers — O birds,
        Good morrow! For your presence thanks.…
                             And yet, may I confess —
        Beseeching you will not mistake my ignorance
        For lack of gentleness or knightly courtesy —
        I know not quite what mission draws you here?
        Only has Father Noah seen such multitudes.
        Is it, perchance, with tree-top news you come
                             Requiring such deliverance?
                   Alack, I have not any roof at all,
                                            Much less an ark.
    But should your needs petition one, content yourselves;
        The brethren shall be willing carpenters.
    Your watchful eyes and silence, courteous and prim,
        Betray I have mistook your coming’s cause.
                   Perhaps on your first-waking flights,
                   Beholding me so quiet in the grass,
    You thought me dead, and came with friendly haste
        To hide in leaves my obvious corruption.
        Three hops and a silver chuckle —
        Robin, irreverent robin, wrong again?
        Ho! ho! at last the dear God sends me sense!
                   A sermon ’tis! Robin, I guessed!
                   Come nearer, darling children, close!
    O lovely cloud of wings! O tiny storm of twitter!
                             What barren faith was ours
                   To pass you by these many days
        Without one salutation in Christ’s name,
        Or news of His impending kingdom once!
        Let these poor words win your forgiveness,
    And His, whose frailest ones we have o’erlooked.
    Brethren! …
                                            Ahem! —
                                                      (Saints! what text can serve!)
                   “In those days Jesus said:
        My Father’s kingdom may be likened to
                             A grain of mustard seed,
        Which, being sown, is smallest of all seeds,
        But, growing up, is greatest of all herbs,
        Till in the shadow of its branches lodge
                                            The birds of heaven.”
                             Yet, no! these words He never spoke.
                                            He knew as you or I
        The idle ways of summer, and the fields
    Where poppies in their silken kerchiefs crowd the wheat,
    And, when the dry, quick autumn winds had stripped
                                            their scarlet,
        He, too, had seen their tiny million seeds —
        Mere dust beside the mustard’s burliness.
                   Mark nodded or forgot, poor fisherman!
                   How often thus they understood Him not!
    And in these far-off days their surface words we seize,
        Set up, adore, and miss the gospel underneath
                             Forgetting they were simple men,
    And He, dear God, who only aimed at simpleness.
    But still He did say Heaven’s kingdom was a tree,
    A mighty tree with branches’ room for all,
    And sunny babblement of leaves where all
    His wingèd ones might skim and shine at