Your weekly slice of Poetry

The weather has been getting warmer these couple weeks, and one of the wonderful side effects of this is that the birds come back to us. There's nothing quite like hearing birds sing as you go outside. You immediately remember that such sounds exist, realizing what the winter had been lacking and enjoying them as hints of Spring. This edition of Poetry Pie features poems where birds are a central image. Enjoy!

Ode to a Nightingale

John Keats (1795—1821)

Keats has a fair number of Odes that he is famous for: the "Ode to a Grecian Urn," the "Ode to Psyche," and this one that I've selected. An ode is a work that addresses some singular subject, speaking to them and about them. In this poem, Keats addresses the nightingale, whose beautiful song grabs his attention and fills him with wonder and longing for a better world. There are themes of the joys and beauty found in nature, sorrow at the death and fallenness of our world, and a desire to escape to the world of the Ideal that this bird inhabits. Keats, who himself died quite young, has a number of poems lamenting the sad reality of youthfulness being spoiled by death. You can hear this sadness in the third stanza.

Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;

The poem is written in a very beautiful and colorful style. This is an example of imagery done very well; he paints the scene such that you feel you are directly there. You can see what he sees and hear what he hears. It is rhymed with an ABABCDECDE pattern. It is written in iambic pentameter, with exception to the third to last line of each stanza, which he shortens to trimeter.

The Windhover

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844—1889)

To Christ our Lord

This is the inscription that precedes this bewildering poem. It is safe to say there is nothing quite like reading a poem by Hopkins. His style is unlike anything that you'll find in other poets. It is very full. It seems as if there are more words in his poems than there are in other poems of similar length. They are almost "Impressionistic," where you may not fully understand what was said, but you are still left with tangible impression of what was being described. The Poetry Foundation offers very helpful notes on the vocabulary in this poem, as there are many words that are quite unused by us today.

The first time you read this just enjoy the sound adventure that it takes you on. You certainly won't understand it immediately, and it will only yield itself to you slowly over the following readings. It is, if you have not guessed, about a bird of prey, the kestrel of the falcon family. The author is filled with admiration and awe at this bird that can ride and maneuver the wind in a distinct majesty.

In terms of form, it is shaped something like a sonnet, with fourteen lines that are split into a group of eight (octet) at the beginning and a group of six (sestet) at the end. It is extremely rich in alliteration and vowel play, much more than can be fully described here. The best example of this is found in the second line, which starts with the second half of a hyphenated word ("kingdom").

dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding

Notice the repetition of the d consonant and the variation on the a vowel. This poem is truly one of a kind.

O Swallow (from The Princess)

Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809—1892)

Living in the North of the US, we often bemoan the longer winters and look with envy on those who live in the warmer South. There are parts of me, however, that stubbornly enjoys these winters, feeling a sense of betrayal over those who abandon us to go to the South in the winter. This poem has a similar perspective, in which the author is wooing his distant love to come from the South to his North.

That bright and fierce and fickle is the South,
And dark and true and tender is the North.

The "swallow" is the author's messenger, sent to sing to her and remind her of the fidelity and love that has its "nest" in the North. This poem is written in an unrhymed iambic pentameter, with three line stanzas.

Singing in the Rain

Abram Newcomer

I do not have any (yet published) poems featuring birds, so I selected my dating sonnet as the best approximation. The joy and abandon found in Gene Kelly's "singing in the rain" scene feels very close to the freedom of a bird in a freshly-born Spring.

Listen to the birds as you leave your homes! God made them to dwell in the skies and the trees. He made them to turn our heads up toward him.