{
 "id": "henry-van-dyke-jr/the-black-birds",
 "title": "The Black Birds",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Henry van Dyke Jr.",
 "poet_slug": "henry-van-dyke-jr",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "The Poems of Henry Van Dyke",
 "book_slug": "poems",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": null,
 "container": null,
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1920,
  "venue": "The Poems of Henry Van Dyke (1920)",
  "note": "Taken from the 1920 collected edition. That is the printing this text comes from, not the poem's first appearance: the volume gathers work published from 1897 onward, and which earlier book or magazine printed this poem first has not been established here.",
  "uncertain": true,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/poemsofhenryvand00vandrich"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/henry-van-dyke-jr_poetry",
  "file": "poetry.xhtml",
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   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/16134",
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   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3525",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/9372",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/29314",
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   "https://archive.org/details/poemsofhenryvand00vandrich",
   "https://archive.org/details/buildersotherpoe00vandrich",
   "https://archive.org/details/toilingoffelixan00vandiala",
   "https://archive.org/details/musicotherpoems0000henr_c7v6",
   "https://archive.org/details/poemsnowfirstcol00vanduoft",
   "https://archive.org/details/songsoutofdoors0000vand",
   "https://archive.org/details/thyseaisgreatour00vandiala",
   "https://archive.org/details/chosenpoems0000vand"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-20"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 71,
  "n_stanzas": 4,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 48,
  "max_indent": 0
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 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Once, only once, I saw it clear⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That Eden every human heart has dreamed",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A hundred times, but always far away!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Ah, well do I remember how it seemed,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Through the still atmosphere",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of that enchanted day,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To lie wide open to my weary feet:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A little land of love and joy and rest,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With meadows of soft green,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Rosy with cyclamen, and sweet",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With delicate breath of violets unseen⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And, tranquil ’mid the bloom",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As if it waited for a coming guest,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A little house of peace and joy and love",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Was nested like a snow-white dove.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "From the rough mountain where I stood,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Homesick for happiness,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Only a narrow valley and a darkling wood",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To cross, and then the long distress",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of solitude would be forever past⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I should be home at last.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But not too soon! oh, let me linger here",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And feed my eyes, hungry with sorrow,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "On all this loveliness, so near,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And mine to-morrow!",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Then, from the wood, across the silvery blue,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A dark bird flew,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Silent, with sable wings.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Close in his wake another came⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Fragments of midnight floating through",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The sunset flame⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Another and another, weaving rings",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of blackness on the primrose sky⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Another, and another, look, a score,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A hundred, yes, a thousand rising heavily",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "From that accursed, dumb, and ancient wood,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "They boiled into the lucid air",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Like smoke from some deep caldron of despair!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And more, and more, and ever more,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The numberless, ill-omened brood",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Flapping their ragged plumes,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Possessed the landscape and the evening light",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With menaces and glooms.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Oh, dark, dark, dark they hovered o’er the place",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where once I saw the little house so white",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Amid the flowers, covering every trace",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of beauty from my troubled sight⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And suddenly it was night!",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "At break of day I crossed the wooded vale;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And while the morning made",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A trembling light among the tree-tops pale,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I saw the sable birds on every limb,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Clinging together closely in the shade,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And croaking placidly their surly hymn.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But, oh, the little land of peace and love",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That those night-loving wings had poised above⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where was it gone?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Lost, lost, forevermore!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Only a cottage, dull and gray,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In the cold light of dawn,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With iron bars across the door:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Only a garden where the drooping head",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of one sad rose, foreboding its decay,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Hung o’er a barren bed:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Only a desolate field that lay",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Untilled beneath the desolate day⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where Eden seemed to bloom I found but these!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So, wondering, I passed along my way,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With anger in my heart, too deep for words,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Against that grove of evil-sheltering trees,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the black magic of the croaking birds.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}