Song Of The Wild Geese

We love the whirl of the bitter gale, and the Northern sleet and snow,

Our flight can pierce the thickest fog, or the strongest winds that blow,

For we are the masters of sea and sand, the lords of land and sky,

And we fear no bird nor beast nor man with our flying wedge on high.

You hear us call in the April dawn, or the chill of an autumn night,

As we rest in the lee of a lonely dune, or swing in our rushing flight,

Or see us pass like specks in the blue, while we circle a breakered shore,

To light in a creek by the Southern Seas, or a bog in Labrador.

No foe can live in our endless swamp, where we dwell by the Polar shed,

Where the low-hung Sun winds round and round, and the Bear is overhead,

Where a quicksand waits for the fool who dares to enter our mist-hid fen,

And we're safe by a good three hundred leagues from the tiny cities of men.

Sharing Season II

Terry Redlin

No land can keep us as its own, no climate's bonds we feel;

When the Northern sedges fade and chill, on wings as strong as steel,

Past forests, coasts, and bays we fly, to the South we know not why,

But we fear no bird nor beast nor man with our flying wedge on high.

"Song Of The Wild Geese"

Written by

Harry R. Peterson

for the 1912 Old Farmer's Almanac