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

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Poems in English 

• English Poetry. Philip James Bailey. Festus – 41. Филип Джеймс Бэйли. by Poetry In English
• English Poetry. Philip James Bailey. Festus – 44. Филип Джеймс Бэйли. by Poetry In English
• English Poetry. Ella Wheeler Wilcox. The Blasphemy of Guns. Элла Уилкокс. by Poetry In English
• English Poetry. Algernon Charles Swinburne. The Triumph of Time. Алджернон Чарльз Суинбёрн. by Poetry In English
• English Poetry. William Barnes. Second Collection. The Heäre. Уильям Барнс. by Poetry In English
• English Poetry. Isaac Watts. Hymn 2. Исаак Уоттс. by Poetry In English
• English Poetry. Henry Livingston. To the Memory of Sarah Livingston. Генри Ливингстон. by Poetry In English
• English Poetry. Edna St. Vincent Millay. Assault. Эдна Сент-Винсент Миллей. by Poetry In English
• English Poetry. Lucy Maud Montgomery. As the Heart Hopes. Люси Мод Монтгомери. by Poetry In English
• English Poetry. Rupert Chawner Brooke. In Examination. Руперт Брук. by Poetry In English
• English Poetry. Percy Bysshe Shelley. Satan Broken Loose. Перси Биши Шелли. Тень Ада by Poetry In English
• English Poetry. David Herbert Lawrence. Whales Weep Not!. Дэвид Герберт Лоуренс. by Poetry In English
• English Poetry. Thomas Aird. The Devil’s Dream on Mount Aksbeck. Томас Эрд. by Poetry In English
• English Poetry. George Eliot. How Lisa Loved the King. Джордж Элиот. by Poetry In English
• English Poetry. Charles Lockhart. Epistle to a Friend, with a Copy of Burns’s Letters. Чарльз Локкарт. Послание другу при возвращении ему томиков стихов Бернса by Poetry In English
• English Poetry. Charles Wesley. Hark! A Voice Div­ides the Sky. Чарльз Уэсли. by Poetry In English
• English Poetry. Robert William Service. My Room. Роберт Уильям Сервис. by Poetry In English
• English Poetry. John Townsend Trowbridge. Midwinter. Джон Таунсенд Троубридж. by Poetry In English
• English Poetry. Robert William Service. Dark Glasses. Роберт Уильям Сервис. by Poetry In English
• English Poetry. Robert William Service. Dark Glasses. Роберт Уильям Сервис. by Poetry In English

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

 

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