A Gift
I woke: —
Night, lingering, poured upon the world
Of drowsy hill and wood and lake
Her moon-song,
And the breeze accompanied with hushed fingers
On the birches.
Gently the dawn held out to me
A golden handful of bird’s-notes.
This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on November 7, 2026, by the Academy of American Poets.
“A Gift” was included in Leonora Speyer’s collection A Canopic Jar (E. P. Dutton, 1921). In his review of the collection, published in Poetry, Vol. 19, No. 1 (October 1921), poet and novelist Glenway Wescott writes, “A Canopic Jar has unpretentious beauty and clear thought, and no earmarks of vulgar success or sacrosanct largeness. She seems able to endure the inward conflict and sedentary work required even to commence art. And one may be sure that she will not rest upon the achievement of this book, or repeat it in her second, betraying those who have faith in her.”
Leonora Speyer
Leonora Speyer was born in Washington, D.C., in 1872. She won the Pulitzer Prize in 1927 for her poetry collection Fiddler’s Farewell (Alfred A. Knopf, 1926)