Poems

Chapter 40: LIKE TO A SONGLESS BIRD

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About This Book

A varied collection of lyric and narrative verse that moves between short songs, sonnets, rondels, and longer meditative pieces. Many poems use pastoral and seasonal imagery to celebrate fields, harvest, and the sensory life of the natural world while also acknowledging the hardships and dignity of rural labor. Recurring themes include love, absence, memory, and spiritual longing, treated with formal variety and musical language. The tone alternates between celebratory, elegiac, and reflective, blending vivid description with moral and emotional observation.

LIKE TO A SONGLESS BIRD

Like to a songless bird that swings

On a high branch, and thrills to hear

How the deep-hearted forest rings

With melody enchanting clear,

And vainly swells his throat to wake

A song as pure as these that fill

The wood, and every echo shake,

Whilst he alone is dumb and still.

So, thrilling to the music dear

Since the first song woke, low and sweet;

To purest sound I bend my ear,

And with my heart the rhythms beat;

Until the palpitating Past

With melody becometh rife;

With parted lips and hands locked fast

I hear the songs of Love and Life.

And then I lift my voice to wake

A song as pure as these that thrill

Through Time. The vaults with music shake

And I alone am dumb and still.