1. With frowning smiles and tempers refined
Bearing, but moving not, and striking, but handless

2. The lineage in her is nobly designed
Though she's not akin in her meanings

3. She flies with the swift, without wings to assist her
And beats them to the goal of the race as she ran

4. She reaches whatever she wills without legs
No camel has she, no ostrich to carry her plan

5. She sees what no glance can take in at a time
No vision has she, she's sightless, and yet

6. She has members of sinew, of flesh, and the like
All the rest of her frame's made of lignum vitae

7. The birds speak to her out of the air
In a tongue not a word of it comes from the lips

8. If she does not incline to them, frowning dissent
Then of mud she can shape her a beak and eclipse

9. Decked out, begirt, with a mantle and robes
Well-guarded, light-weighted; of neighbours the joy

10. Now female, now male, changing hues
In the dresses she borrows from each in her ply

11. Ageing, yet daily her youth renewed
Till Time himself falters in following her track

12. As if God the Most Surety underwrote life for her
She stands pledged to us always to take nothing back

13. Harder to reach than horizons remote
Sweeter to hold than all other delights

14. Whenever she comes and makes home in a place
The dearth and the arid must surely take flight