Read "The Ruby-Crowned Kinglet" by Henry van Dyke online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Where's your kingdom, little king?
Where the land you call your own, / Where your palace and your throne?
Fluttering lightly on the wing / Through the blossom-world of May, / Whither lies your royal way, / Little king?
Far to northward lies a land / Where the trees together stand / Closely as the blades of wheat / When the summer is complete.
Rolling like an ocean wide / Over vale and mountainside, / Balsam, hemlock, spruce and pine --
All those mighty trees are mine.
There's a river flowing free --
All its waves belong to me.
There's a lake so clear and bright / Stars shine out of it all night; / Rowan-berries round it spread / Like a belt of coral red.
Never royal garden planned / Fair as my Canadian land!
There I build my summer nest, / There I reign and there I rest, / While from dawn to dark I sing, / Happy kingdom! Lucky king!
II
Back again, my little king!
Is your happy kingdom lost / To the rebel knave, Jack Frost?
Have you felt the snow-flakes sting?
Houseless, homeless in October, / Whither now? Your plight is sober, / Exiled king!
Far to southward lie the regions / Where my loyal flower-legions / Hold possession of the year, / Filling every month with cheer.
Christmas wakes the winter rose; / New Year daffodils unclose; / Yellow jasmine through the wood / Flows in February flood, / Dropping from the tallest trees / Golden streams that never freeze.
Thither now I take my flight / Down the pathway of the night, / Till I see the southern moon / Glisten on the broad lagoon, / Where the cypress' dusky green, / And the dark magnolia's sheen, / Weave a shelter round my home.
There the snow-storms never come; / There the bannered mosses gray / Like a curtain gently sway, / Hanging low on every side / Round the covert where I bide, / Till the March azalea glows, / Royal red and heavenly rose, / Through the Carolina glade / Where my winter home is made.