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Birds and poetry (1 Viewer)

Thanks for that lovely poem, Merlin. I’m afraid though Colin didn’t include poems from members so they haven’t featured in the count. Maybe one day we should compile a separate list of these – it would probably surprise us how many there are.

Here is a poem from the dramatist Thomas Heywood (c1570-1641). It certainly can't be accused of being off-thread!

Matin Song

Pack, clouds, away, and welcome day,
With night we banish sorrow;
Sweet air blow soft, mount larks aloft
To give my Love good-morrow!
Wings from the wind to please her mind
Notes from the lark I’ll borrow;
Bird, prune thy wing, nightingale sing,
To give my Love good-morrow;
To give my Love good-morrow
Notes from them both I’ll borrow.

Wake from thy nest, robin-red-breast,
Sing, birds, in every furrow;
And from each hill, let music shrill
Give my fair Love good-morrow!
Blackbird and thrush in every bush,
Stare, linnet, and cock-sparrow!
You pretty elves, amongst yourselves
Sing my fair Love good-morrow;
To give my Love good-morrow
Sing, birds, in every furrow!

Thomas Heywood


Andrew
 
Andrew ,I have found a really strange poem about a Raven by Norman Nicholson,he was our local poet.
So should help bump up the number.

The Raven

The raven flew above the screes,above the rocks,
Where the bare bones of the mountain broke through the skin,
And rain trickled to the black tarn, and lichen
Grew like gangrene on the splintered knuckles,
Above the upland dykes and slate and cobble walls
Piled agains't the high waves of the fells.
With slower corrugations of its wings
It dropped below the bracken cut for bedding
To where green oats were sown on the brant fell,
And the lyle herdwicks fed in the wet pastures
For the grass was thicker there and orchids and burnet grew.
The raven suddenly steeped steeply up in the air
Seeing a man sitting beside the beck,
An old man with a beard as white as may.The green
Water wound like bindweed round the rocks,
And burst into buds and elderflowers of foam;
Rowans and hawthorns creamed and bubbled with blossom
And splashed their petals on the old man's head,
Who felt them not at all nor the thin white rain.
The raven soared on a lifting wind
And flew to the farm beyond the mosses,
Dropped like a hawk to the stackyard,scared
The fowls with a thick black beak,and snatched the bread
Which the farmers wife had scattered.It flew to the dale
And dropped the bread to the man,who dipped it into the water,
And ate it like a sop.The raven flew away
Knowing no reason nor questioning,knowing neither
The man's face nor his name,for there was never a place
For names in the brain of a raven,'though it's eyes
Were a doves eyes in a black corvine head.

Norman Nicholson
1914-1987
 
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Christine, thanks so much for posting The Raven, a wonderful poem. What a fine poet Nicholson was, such a pity his poetry is not more accessible on the internet.

Andrew
 
Hi everyone.
Hope you are all well.

This is by the Australian poet A D Hope-it conjures the many journeys which are starting now.

The Death of a Bird


For every bird there is this last migration;
Once more the cooling year kindles her heart;
With a warm passage to the summer station
Love pricks the course in lights across the chart.

Year after year a speck on the map divided
By a whole hemisphere, summons her to come;
Season after season, sure and safely guided,
Going away she is also coming home;

And being home, memory becomes a passion
With which she feeds her brood and straws her nest;
Aware of ghosts that haunt the heart’s possession
And exiled love mourning within the breast.

The sands are green with a mirage of valleys;
The palm-tree casts a shadow not its own;
Down the long architrave of temple or palace
Blows a cool air from moorland scraps of stone.

And day by day the whisper of love grows stronger,
That delicate voice, more urgent with despair,
Custom and fear constraining her no longer,
Drives her at last on the waste leagues of air.

A vanishing speck in those inane dominions,
Single and frail, uncertain of her place.
Alone in the bright host of her companions,
Lost in the blue unfriendliness of space.

She feels it close now, the appointed season:
The invisible thread is broken as she flies;
Suddenly, without warning, without reason,
The guiding spark of instinct winks and dies.

Try as she will the trackless world delivers
No way, the wilderness of light no sign,
The immense and complex map of hills and rivers
Mocks her small wisdom with its vast design.

And darkness rises from the eastern valleys,
And the winds buffet her with their hungry breath,
And the great earth, with neither grief nor malice,
Receives the tiny burden of her death.

– A. D. Hope (1907-2000)

__________________________________________

Colin
 
Good to hear from you, Colin. I am not familiar with A D Hope’s poetry at all but greatly enjoyed reading ‘The Death of a Bird’. It has some very good, and memorable, lines. I particularly like the poignancy of the last two:

‘And the great earth, with neither grief nor malice,
Receives the tiny burden of her death.’

Here is another poet new to the thread. Vernon Watkins (1906-67) was a close friend of Dylan Thomas (a friendship that survived Dylan’s failure to turn up at Watkins’ wedding – he was best man) and he knew Yeats, Eliot, Larkin, and R S Thomas. He lived for his poetry (apparently he announced his intention to become a poet at the age of five) and was widely published in his lifetime.


The Heron

The cloud-backed heron will not move:
He stares into the stream.
He stands unfaltering while the gulls
And oyster-catchers scream.
He does not hear, he cannot see
The great white horses of the sea,
But fixes eyes on stillness
Below their flying team.

How long will he remain, how long
Have the grey woods been green?
The sky and the reflected sky,
Their glass he has not seen,
But silent as a speck of sand
Interpreting the sea and land,
His fall pulls down the fabric
Of all that windy scene.

Sailing with clouds and woods behind,
Pausing in leisured flight,
He stepped, alighting on a stone,
Dropped from the stars of night.
He stood there unconcerned with day,
Deaf to the tumult of the bay,
Watching a stone in water,
A fish’s hidden light.

Sharp rocks drive back the breaking waves,
Confusing sea with air.
Bundles of spray blown mountain-high
Have left the shingle bare.
A shipwrecked anchor wedged by rocks,
Loosed by the thundering equinox,
Divides the herded waters,
The stallion and his mare.

Yet no distraction breaks the watch
Of that time-killing bird.
He stands unmoving on the stone;
Since dawn he has not stirred.
Calamity about him cries,
But he has fixed his golden eyes
On water’s crooked tablet,
On light’s reflected word.

Vernon Watkins


Andrew
 
Andrew
good poem from Vernon Watkins,
I have posted this before but I have just come across it in one of my old bird books.
regards
Merlin

Flying Machines by Little Stint

When Bleriot the Channel flew
The people made a great to-do
They came in thousands just to stare
At the great Conqueror of the Air
Who crossed from France to England's shore
A flight of twenty miles or more
"How great an aeroplane!" they said;
"And what a noise the engine made!"
"And how could Bleriot know that he
Would find his way across the sea
Which none had ever flown before?"
And so they wondered more and more,
Until at last their hats they raise
And cheer to their great hero's praise.
Yet I, when called to make my flight,
Have slipped off in an Arctic night
And lightly flown o'er land and sea,
The only engine carrying me
My heart, no bigger than a shilling,
Which for twelve thousand miles is willing.
Less than two ounces is my weight,
No petrol cans increase my freight,
No chart nor compass 'neath my eyes
To mark the track through trackless skies
And still untiring to the verge
Of Australasian ocean's surge
From North Siberia's coast I fly.
Spanning the globe unerringly.
No cheering thousands when I land,
No startling posters in the Strand;
No wondering word, no praise is heard,
But then - I only am a bird.
 
Hi Merlin, thanks for posting 'Flying Machines' again. It puts things nicely in perspective, doesn't it? I like it.

Here is another poem from Edward Thomas:

The Lane

Some day, I think, there will be people enough
In Froxfield to pick all the blackberries
Out of the hedges of Green Lane, the straight
Broad lane where now September hides herself
In bracken and blackberry, harebell and dwarf gorse.
To-day, where yesterday a hundred sheep
Were nibbling, halcyon bells shake to the sway.
Of waters that no vessel ever sailed. . .
It is a kind of spring: the chaffinch tries
His song. For heat it is like summer too.
This might be winter's quiet. While the glint
Of hollies dark in the swollen hedges lasts -
One mile - and those bells ring, little I know
Or heed if time be still the same, until
The lane ends and once more all is the same.

Edward Thomas


Andrew
 
Wreck

Sailing for New York City,
on the good brig, Hosea Jackson, the captain —
the good Captain Hearn. Gull-wings
streaming down the wake of the stern,
sails in full wind, fanning in the august east wind.
Rounding Cape Pellegrino
for the Gates of Hercules and the United States:
a journey meant no more than three months.
Then the sky lit its blood crucible,
burning the very corpse of Sicily,
and I —among the living, vowing
never to return.
Fifty chests and boxes safely laid in hold,
shanties of Yankee Tars filling the days,
along with the music of topsails, sheets, spars.
I'd heard of others bound hellward: to Africa,
to Guinea — there to stalk leviathan,
cure skins, mount birds, press plants...
but I...I would set merely to name them all!

Then! In sight of Montauk a squall,
tumbling us to beam-ends That Wall Of Wave!
CRACK! Taking both masts before we righted! —
then, there, naked, shivering, rudder-racked,
league upon tossed league of calenture
nearing Fisher's Island, then Race Rock
The Second of November near Midnight —
storm with a meteor's head, splintered the rudder
in a boil of sea, then with a brash curvet
the brig tilted, ripped with roars of "Race Rocks! Race Rocks!
Everyone to the boats! To the boats!"

Her keel to flotsam, she ground, floating
down the sound, filling
With my manuscripts, my toil
of years — trunk and trunk of matchless specimens!
My books! Clothes, gold! New World
without mercy! New World naked! New World cold!
As bowlder-ax split keel and kelson, all ribs
unseamed, and a black sailor by me swore, screamed,
but did not follow me upon the spine
of a shoal-stricken beast maul
of a breaker, seizing with a million chills:
I was asunder, sucked like all of perdition's pull,
then beaten, crumpled onto a beach! There,
staggering in backwash, lost in sargassum weeds.
And I screamed: "Foam-heads, stifle
your thunder drum! More naked
than brave Ulysses, I have come
to this new begotten land. And I take
all the shame you chose to show me!
Strip me, crush me! But never
shall you claim all! Rafinesque here bows
upon this coarse stretch of sand, and to America
offers up mind and strength, raise me
as I raise your secrets, America! Down then, down
then...beat the ground, eyes averted, region unbound!
Shout you beautiful spirits, I'm bound
for Indian Summer with the teal and the tern;
All the fish, pike and sturgeon, follow
me spinning their silver wheels; I
hear them rumble great fish underneath
our keels! And my sleep will be
a great horned owl: I see him float before me!
This is my first morning: I hear a chorus
of southing birds who never soar away from spring!
I will navigate the channels of God who is Science!

You see...
a shipwrecked wretch is anybody's guest...

Gerald Schwartz



Not a poet I'm familiar with, but through place and time, close to the experience I've had this summer.
 
Hi Kristina, that is a very powerful poem from Gerald Schwartz (new to me too). I’m sorry to hear though that you had a similar experience this summer. That sounds a bit hairy. Hope you came through it in one piece.

Andrew
 
Here's a ditty in Brooklynese, Brooklyn New Yawk that is:

Spring is sprung,
The grass is riz,
I wonder where,
de Boidy's iz?

Here, also on a lighter note and to keep this wonderful thread moving along, is Ogden Nash on duck hunting:

The hunter crouches in his blind
'Neath camouflage of every kind,
And conjures up a quacking noise
To lend allure to his decoys,
This grown-up man, with pluck and luck
Is hoping to outwit a duck.
 
Hello everyone and many thanks for the great selection of poetry posted in the last month or two and for keeping this wonderful thread alive.

Here's another from the enigmatic Emily Dickinson.


Further in Summer than the Birds

Further in Summer than the Birds
Pathetic from the Grass
A minor Nation celebrates
Its unobtrusive Mass.

No Ordinance be seen
So gradual the Grace
A pensive Custom it becomes
Enlarging Loneliness.

Antiquest felt at Noon
When August burning low
Arise this spectral Canticle
Repose to typify

Remit as yet no Grace
No Furrow on the Glow
Yet a Druidic Difference
Enhances Nature now

Emily Dickinson

Nerine
 
Have no fear dear friends, this thread will never move off the first page. I am always in the background watching and waiting, and will jump in to rectify it if ever needed.
It's the 14th of February 2004 when Christine started this thread and many members have come and gone in that time, but there are always some new member who joins and brings fresh ideas and outlook to the thread. I often wondered if I should try and compile all the poems into some kind of book form, similar to my efforts with Dr Manjeets stories but I think it would be too big an undertaking and I would be dead of old age before I finished. A big thank you Christine for starting this wonderful thread.
 
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Hi Tanny,
it's good to know that you are there.
Here is one from John Clare, I am not sure if it has been posted before?

Autumn Birds

The wild duck startles like a sudden thought,
And heron slow as if it might be caught.
The flopping crows on weary wings go by
And grey beard jackdaws noising as they fly.
The crowds of starnels whizz and hurry by,
And darken like a clod the evening sky.
The larks like thunder rise and suthy round,
Then drop and nestle in the stubble ground.
The wild swan hurries hight and noises loud
With white neck peering to the evening clowd.
The weary rooks to distant woods are gone.
With lengths of tail the magpie winnows on
To neighbouring tree, and leaves the distant crow
While small birds nestle in the edge below.
 
Wow, seconed page.

Good grief, :eek!:I've been away from the forum for some time, busy doing the garden and picking blackberries. Tonight I just popped in to read the latest poems and low and behold I discovered the thread on the second page. double eek:eek!::eek!:
Ah well I suppose its time to give you wonderful poets a rest, ;)after all the list of poems with birds mentioned must now be exhausted.
If I notice this thread slipping away again I will have to write some bird poems of my own, then with all the comments the thread will stay on the front page.:t:
 
Good to have you here, Tanny, I look forward to your bird poems!

A great poem by John Clare, Merlin, thank you.

Best wishes to all

Nerine
 
Martin Summer

House Martin Summer.

With great expectations the Martins came this year,
Swiftly followed by the swallows after the flies.
Beneath the eves of buildings they made their nest,
Consisting of mud and straw that quickly dries.
The Martins twittering heard far and near,
The Swifts, fast flyers flutter high with no rest.

The first clutch of young survive the wet summer,
The flies were few and the birds flew far and wide.
Searching high and low in rain clouds, damp and dark,
Among the trees and on rare thermals they ride.
The rain beat the roof like a tormented drummer,
Flooding the rivers, Pastures, Playground’s and Park.

A second clutch is foolish and doomed to fail,
The rain and stormy weather deter the flies.
From breeding, the young in the nest starve and die.
I hear under the house roof their pitiful cries.
As the parents bedraggled perch the farm rail,
Who then sadly fly south to Africa’s dry.

When those bright summer visitors fly away,
We are left bemoaning this persistent rain.
And dream of next year when the Martins return,
And prey they’re more successful in their breeding game.
Rain throughout the night and raining still today,
Strewth, fair dincum it’s for that Aussy sun I yearn.
------------------------
Sorry for the last line, but being a half-cast Aussy I just had to add that bit.
Honest though, I wouldn’t go back to live in that opposite kind of weather,
And a land opposite to this wet, exciting green land of England.
Tanny 06/09/2008.
 
thanks,Tanny,a very thoughtful poem.I have been watching the Swifts and Swallows flying around this evening.Poor birds,so bedraggled.Last week,many were set to go,I guess they knew the weather conditions which were about to happen.
 
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