Death of the 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 scarps 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;

Immense,complex contours of hills and rivers

Mock her small wisdom with their vast design.

The 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.

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Poems in English 

• In Imitation of E. of Rochester : On Silence poem – Alexander Pope poems | Poetry Monster by Poetry In English
• In Imitation of E. of Dorset : Artemisia poem – Alexander Pope poems | Poetry Monster by Poetry In English
• In Imitation of Dr. Swift : The Happy Life of a Country Parson poem – Alexander Pope poems | Poetry Monster by Poetry In English
• In Imitation of Cowley : The Garden poem – Alexander Pope poems | Poetry Monster by Poetry In English
• In Imitation of Chaucer poem – Alexander Pope poems | Poetry Monster by Poetry In English
• Impromptu, to Lady Winchelsea poem – Alexander Pope poems | Poetry Monster by Poetry In English
• Imitations of Horace: The First Epistle of the Second Book poem – Alexander Pope poems | Poetry Monster by Poetry In English
• From an Essay on Man poem – Alexander Pope poems | Poetry Monster by Poetry In English
• Essay on Man poem – Alexander Pope poems | Poetry Monster by Poetry In English
• Epistles to Several Persons: Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot poem – Alexander Pope poems | Poetry Monster by Poetry In English
• Epistles to Several Persons: Epistle IV, To Richard Boyle, poem – Alexander Pope poems | Poetry Monster by Poetry In English
• Epistle II: To A Lady (Of the Characters of Women) poem – Alexander Pope poems | Poetry Monster by Poetry In English
• Epistle To Mrs Teresa Blount.[On Her Leaving The Town After The Coronation] poem – Alexander Pope poems | Poetry Monster by Poetry In English
• Epistle To Mrs Teresa Blount.[On Her Leaving The Town After The Coronation] poem – Alexander Pope poems | Poetry Monster by Poetry In English
• Epigram Engraved on the Collar of a Dog Which I Gave to His Royal Highness poem – Alexander Pope poems | Poetry Monster by Poetry In English
• Eloisa to Abelard poem – Alexander Pope poems | Poetry Monster by Poetry In English
• Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady poem – Alexander Pope poems | Poetry Monster by Poetry In English
• Couplets on Wit poem – Alexander Pope poems | Poetry Monster by Poetry In English
• Chorus of Youths and Virgins poem – Alexander Pope poems | Poetry Monster by Poetry In English
• Chorus of Athenians poem – Alexander Pope poems | Poetry Monster by Poetry In English

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