The Bird-Bride, by Graham R. Tomson, is a collection of romantic ballads, delicate sonnets, and metrical studies in foreign fanciful forms. The poem that gives its title to the book is the lament of an Eskimo hunter over the loss of his wife and children.
Years agone, on the flat white strand,
I won my sweet
sea-girl:
Wrapped in my coat of the snow-white
fur,
I watched the wild birds settle
and stir,
The grey gulls
gather and whirl.
One, the greatest of all the flock,
Perched on an
ice-floe bare,
Called and cried as her heart were
broke,
And straight they were changed,
that fleet bird-folk,
To women young
and fair.
Swift I sprang from my hiding-place
And held the fairest
fast;
I held her fast, the sweet, strange
thing:
Her comrades skirled, but they all
took wing,
And smote me as
they passed.
I bore her safe to my warm snow
house;
Full sweetly there
she smiled;
And yet, whenever the shrill winds
blew,
She would beat her long white arms
anew,
And her eyes glanced
quick and wild.
But I took her to wife, and clothed
her warm
With skins of
the gleaming seal;
Her wandering glances sank to rest
When she held a babe to her fair,
warm breast,
And she loved
me dear and leal.
Together we tracked the fox and
the seal,
And at her behest
I swore
That bird and beast my bow might
slay
For meat and for raiment, day by
day,
But never a grey
gull more.
Famine comes upon the land, and the hunter, forgetting his oath, slays four sea-gulls for food. The bird-wife ‘shrilled out in a woful cry,’ and taking the plumage of the dead birds, she makes wings for her children and for herself, and flies away with them.
’Babes of mine, of the wild
wind’s kin,
Feather ye quick,
nor stay.
Oh, oho! but the wild winds blow!
Babes of mine, it is time to go:
Up, dear hearts,
and away!’