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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External links

Bat’s Poetry Page – more poetry by Fledermaus

Talking Writing Monster’s Page –

Batty Writing – the bat’s idle chatter, thoughts, ideas and observations, all original, all fresh

Poems in English 

• Poor Mailie’s Elegy by Robert Burns by Robert Burns
• Poem on Sensibility by Robert Burns by Robert Burns
• Pegasus at Wanlockhead by Robert Burns by Robert Burns
• Paraphrase of the First Psalm by Robert Burns by Robert Burns
• One Night as I did Wander by Robert Burns by Robert Burns
• On the late Captain Grose’s Peregrinations by Robert Burns by Robert Burns
• On the Death of Robert Dundas, Esq., of Arniston by Robert Burns by Robert Burns
• On the Death of John M’Leod, Esq. by Robert Burns by Robert Burns
• On the Birth of a Posthumous Child by Robert Burns by Robert Burns
• On Tam the Chapman by Robert Burns by Robert Burns
• On seeing Mrs. Kemble in Yarico by Robert Burns by Robert Burns
• On Scaring some Water-Fowl in Lock Turit by Robert Burns by Robert Burns
• On Glenriddell’s Fox breaking his chain: A Fragment by Robert Burns by Robert Burns
• On Elphinstone’s Translation of Martial’s Epigrams by Robert Burns by Robert Burns
• On Chloris requesting a sprig of blossom’d thorn by Robert Burns by Robert Burns
• Oh Wert Thou In The Cauld Blast by Robert Burns by Robert Burns
• Ode, Sacred to the Memory of Mrs. Oswald of Auchencruive by Robert Burns by Robert Burns
• Ode on the Departed Regency Bill by Robert Burns by Robert Burns
• Ode for General Washington’s Birthday by Robert Burns by Robert Burns
• Note to Mr. Renton of Lamerton by Robert Burns by Robert Burns

More external links (open in a new tab):

Russian Commerce Agency

Dealing Monster

Doska or the Board – write anything

Search engines:

Yandex – the best search engine for searches in Russian (and the best overall image search engine, in any language, anywhere)

Qwant – the best search engine for searches in French, German as well as Romance and Germanic languages.

Ecosia – a search engine that supposedly… plants trees

Duckduckgo – the real alternative and a search engine that actually works. Without much censorship or partisan politics.

Yahoo– yes, it’s still around, amazingly, miraculously, incredibly, but now it seems to be powered by Bing.

 

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