Sky-coloured bird

Sky-coloured bird, blue wings with no more spots of spotless white
Dappled, than on a day in spring
When the brown meadows trickle with a hundred brooks two inches broad and wink and flash back light—
Dappled with no more white than on an all but cloudless sky makes clear blue deeper and more bright.

Exquisite glutton, azure coward with proud crest
And iridescent nape—
Mild milky mauve, chalcedony,
then lustred, and all amethyst, then brushed with bronze, the half-green clustered with the ripe grape, under the lapis crest.
Dull-feathered bird today, pecking at ashes by the cinder-pit, your clanging tone alone makes known our northern jay
Sky-coloured—under a slaty sky sky-coloured still, slate-grey.