The Matin-Song Of Friar Tuck

I.     If souls could sing to heaven's high King         As blackbirds pipe on earth,     How those delicious courts would ring         With gusts of lovely mirth!     What white-robed throng could lift a song         So mellow with righteous glee     As this brown bird that all day long         Delights my hawthorn tree.             Hark! That's the thrush                 With speckled breast             From yon white bush                 Chaunting his best,         Te Deum! Te Deum laudamus!     II.     If earthly dreams be touched with gleams         Of Paradisal air,     Some wings, perchance, of earth may glance         Around our slumbers there;     Some breaths of may might drift our way         With scents of leaf and loam,     Some whistling bird at dawn be heard         From those old woods of home.             Hark! That's the thrush                 With speckled breast             From yon white bush                 Chaunting his best,         Te Deum! Te Deum laudamus!     III.     No King or priest shall mar my feast         Where'er my soul may range.     I have no fear of heaven's good cheer         Unless our Master change.     But when death's night is dying away,         If I might choose my bliss,     My love should say, at break of day,         With her first waking kiss:-             Hark! That's the thrush                 With speckled breast,             From yon white bush                 Chaunting his best,         Te Deum! Te Deum laudamus!