The Rede of the Swan - A poem by John P. Gilday

The Rede of the Swan.

Life is beauteous, Life is kind,
Who sees not beauty, his soul is blind,
Who finds not love, seeks not to find.
(Thus sang the Swan on the silvered lake,
To her brood as they played in her rippling wake.)

Sweet is the sun, gentle the sky,
Caressing, the zephyrs that murmur by^___
Of love the birds sing as they fly.
(A thing of beauty herself, the Swan
Sang this song in the flush of dawn.)

Our world's a mirror that lovelily
Reflects the things we try to see,
In flower, or bird, or the bending tree.
(The truth of the song the fledgelings know
As they peer into the depths below.)

But what of the darksome depths below,
Where the sunlit waters never flow,
Are naught of their secrets ours to know?
(Thus one of the brood aspired to sing
Swimming afar from the mother wing.)

Life is beauteous, kind and sweet,
Why tempt the fates beyond your feet?
Sufficeth the love of each day to greet.
(So sang the Swan, as she sped to bring
The wandering one beneath her wing.)

^__John P. Gilday

Contemporary Kansas Poetry
Helen Rhoda Hoopes
page 62
(Kansas City: Joseph D. Havens Company. 1927)