Blithe Bondage

Your wings are leaden, little bird,

Lone captive in a cage;

Your song is hope's clear echo heard

Ringing down an age.

You glimpse the beauty of the world

Through bars that bind and hold;

White clouds that ride the wind unfurled

Are yours but to behold.

And yet you sing your dauntless song

As if bright revelry

Had wafted you in feathered throng,

Aloft, ecstatic, free.

Your heart must know the irony

Of laughter in a room

Whose walls shut out a striving dream

That knocks like doom.

(First published in Along the Lane: Dedicated to the memory of Thomas William Larsen, who lost his life in World War II)