Whenever I heard the song of a bird and the answering call of its mate, I could visualize the notes in scale, all built up within my consciousness as a natural symphony.
quote by William Christopher Handy
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The Caged Thrush
Alas for the bird who was born to sing!
They have made him a cage; they have clipped his wing;
They have shut him up in a dingy street,
And they praise his singing and call it sweet.
But his heart and his song are saddened and filled
With the woods, and the nest he never will build,
And the wild young dawn coming into the tree,
And the mate that never his mate will be.
And day by day, when his notes are heard
They freshen the street--but alas for the bird
poem by Robert Fuller Murray
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Divine Bird
i would skp the best musical concert
to listen one more time to this morning bird
it makes me regret for not having been
a bird watcher and getting to know the name
of every bird and how every bird makes sure
they shine their best in voice rather than feathers
for feathers are just for a show of form but the
voice how well they have cultivated themselves
with the bountiful freedoms strewn below their wings
it was only two mornings ago, i first heard him
sing in among the many trees lining the boulevard
outside my condominium, the Crescent Court
the enchanting haunting notes of his song shocked
me into wondering whether it was really a bird that
sang those pristine notes, notes that seemed to have
streamed out of the sacred sanctum of God, so many
diverse notes, so well handled, they sounded
like a song written by the Divine for one special bird
one most holy entree to the dawn of a new day
i prayed to the Divine to allow me hear that bird
again, a bird that has sung his way into my my poem,
a bird probably from another realm where birds could
understand the workings of the heavens better than men
poem by John Tiong Chunghoo
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The Voice
One feather is a bird,
I claim; one tree, a wood;
In her low voice I heard
More than a mortal should;
And so I stood apart,
Hidden in my own heart.
And yet I roamed out where
Those notes went, like the bird,
Whose thin song hung in air,
Diminished, yet still heard:
I lived with open sound,
Aloft, and on the ground.
That ghost was my own choice,
The shy cerulean bird;
It sang with her true voice,
And it was I who heard
A slight voice reply;
I heard; and only I.
Desire exults the ear:
Bird, girl, and ghostly tree,
The earth, the solid air--
Their slow song sang in me;
The long noon pulsed away,
Like any summer day.
poem by Theodore Roethke
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Chorale for M' lady Penny
The black bird sweetly tunes his throat.
A stream of liquid notes which float.
As if suspended somewhere
in between fact and fantasy.
Thus starts the morning symphony
The throstle warbles his reply,
the skylark joins in happily
from his position in the sky.
Each song bird now will raise its voice
in interweaving melody.
To demonstrate that they rejoice
because the morning brings release
from the terrors of the night.
Their morning chorus My delight.
27-Feb-08
poem by Ivor Or Ivor.e Hogg
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Whisper My Name
I heard a freight train out across the way
I heard a woman sing amazing grace
I heard a night bird call to its mate
When I heard you whisper my name
I heard freedom break its chain
A
I heard a heart beat where once on sound remained
I heard angels rise and praise
When I heard you whisper my name
Chorus:
I heard music bring a heart of stone to tears
I heard peace ring like an anthem through the years
And I heard hatred fall from grace
When I heard you whisper my name
Beating softly against the waves
Fell a sound of an early morning rain
And though the lighting and thunder came
I still heard you whisper my name
And I heard angels rise and praise
When I heard you whisper my name
song performed by by Randy Travis
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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A Song For All
A dream lets out a clarion call
For a song for all - you and me.
A song for all is sometimes not to be sung.
It needs no singer nor any music.
A song for all needs no listener either.
It`s often heard from within.
A song for all is often silent
As no torrents thereof transmounts the minds.
A song for all sometimes cristalises into a mute babe.
Then it cries for our care later.
A silent wave of a song not sung
Craves for an entry into our spirit stubborn.
The notes firm for a life time
Make the song unsung a nightingale sweetly dumb.
Your breath substantiates a life`s tale.
If I miss to feel it, I miss to hear a song.
Dear mortal enlightened, have a mind
To breathe your song into my indifferences.
A song sung for ourselves for once
Will make the cuckoo nostalgic ever,
And she will come to our dwelling places
To absorb the new notes unlearnt earlier.
A song for all may be a dream,
But its mute riches have no reverses.
poem by M.d Dinesh Nair
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The Source
There in the fringe of trees between
the upper field and the edge of the one
below it that runs above the valley
one time I heard in the early
days of summer the clear ringing
six notes that I knew were the opening
of the Fingal's Cave Overture
I heard them again and again that year
and the next summer and the year
afterward those six descending
notes the same for all the changing
in my own life since the last time
I had heard them fall past me from
the bright air in the morning of a bird
and I believed that what I had heard
would always be there if I came again
to be overtaken by that season
in that place after the winter
and I would wonder again whether
Mendelssohn really had heard them somewhere
far to the north that many years ago
looking up from his youth to listen to
those six notes of an ancestor
spilling over from a presence neither
water nor human that led to the cave
in his mind the fluted cliffs and the wave
going out and the falling water
he thought those notes could be the music for
Mendelssohn is gone and Fingal is gone
all but his name for a cave and for one
piece of music and the black-capped warbler
as we called that bird that I remember
singing there those notes descending
from the age of the ice dripping
I have not heard again this year can it
be gone then will I not hear it
from now on will the overture begin
for a time and all those who listen
feel that falling in them but as always
without knowing what they recognize
poem by William Stanley Merwin
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Let's Compare Notes
Let's compare notes.
At one time you had said,
My comments provoked!
And you denounced,
Those words I spoke!
Let's compare notes.
Today you raise the same concerns.
And yet you say to others...
With the same words they have already heard.
But now you have a broader consciousness.
Let's compare notes!
What you say today,
Is 'intended' to provoke.
But you believe there should be an exception...
Since 'you' have been awakened from a deep sleep.
poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
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Critic and Poet: an Epilogue
("Poetry must be simple, sensuous, or impassioned; this man is neither simple, sensuous, nor impassioned; therefore he is not a poet")
No man had ever heard a nightingale,
When once a keen-eyed naturalist was stirred
To study and define--what is a bird,
To classify by rote and book, nor fail
To mark its structure and to note the scale
Whereon its song might possibly be heard.
Thus far, no farther;--so he spake the word.
When of a sudden,--hark, the nightingale!
Oh deeper, higher than he could divine
That all-unearthly, untaught strain! He saw
The plain, brown warbler, unabashed. "Not mine"
(He cried) "the error of this fatal flaw.
No bird is this, it soars beyond my line,
Were it a bird, 'twould answer to my law."
poem by Emma Lazarus
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The Two Blackbirds
A blackbird in a wicker cage,
That hung and swung 'mid fruits and flowers,
Had learnt the song-charm, to assuage
The drearness of its wingless hours.
And ever when the song was heard,
From trees that shade the grassy plot
Warbled another glossy bird,
Whose mate not long ago was shot.
Strange anguish in that creature's breast,
Unwept like human grief, unsaid,
Has quickened in its lonely nest
A living impulse from the dead.
Not to console its own wild smart, -
But with a kindling instinct strong,
The novel feeling of its heart
Beats for the captive bird of song.
And when those mellow notes are still,
It hops from off its choral perch,
O'er path and sward, with busy bill,
All grateful gifts to peck and search.
Store of ouzel dainties choice
To those white swinging bars it brings;
And with a low consoling voice
It talks between its fluttering wings.
Deeply in their bitter grief
Those sufferers reciprocate,
The one sings for its woodland life,
The other for its murdered mate.
But deeper doth the secret prove,
Uniting those sad creatures so;
Humanity's great link of love,
The common sympathy of woe.
Well divined from day to day
Is the swift speech between them twain;
For when the bird is scared away,
The captive bursts to song again.
Yet daily with its flattering voice,
Talking amid its fluttering wings,
Store of ouzel dainties choice
With busy bill the poor bird brings.
And shall I say, till weak with age
Down from its drowsy branch it drops,
It will not leave that captive cage,
Nor cease those busy searching hops?
Ah, no! the moral will not strain;
Another sense will make it range,
Another mate will soothe its pain,
Another season work a change.
But thro' the live-long summer, tried,
A pure devotion we may see;
The ebb and flow of Nature's tide;
A self-forgetful sympathy.
poem by George Meredith
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Farewell Little Bird
Little bird,
why are you so lonely?
Did you not like your home
that I have prepared for you?
Look! it's made of gold!
Can't you see?
I have given you
the nicest place to live
because
you are so dear to me.
Little bird
please sing me a song,
the one
that I have heard from you
the day I saw you in the forest
before I made you mine.
Little bird,
why are you still lonely?
Is my heart for you
not enough?
Do you really want your life
back in the forest? ....
Little bird,
there you are!
now, spread your wings
I'm setting you free.....
Little bird,
I'd rather let you go
and see your happiness,
than keep you beside me
and see your loneliness.
Farewell little bird.
I wish
to hear your song again
......in the forest.
poem by Marites C. Cayetano
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The Last Song
The last song that I shall write
will probably never be heard.
For I shall dream it in the night,
both the notes and the word.
I’m certain it will be the best of the lot
and be heard only by me.
That thought ties me in a knot
from which I am not free.
Will it be fast? Will it be slow?
Will it be smooth and sensual
or maybe a crisp staccato?
No more song after that.
It will shut my music down.
And I will content myself after
with the knowing that all I’ve written
was with passion for the sound.
For I’ve heard these sounds
since I was born
on a cold and blustery Wednesday morn.
I came into this world with music
and will leave with it someday.
And the last song will travel with me
and be heard in the Milky Way.
poem by Edwina Reizer
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An Omnipotent Omnipresent Omniscient God
no human being
can understand
what an omnipotent
omnipresent
omniscient
God is or can
do on a cosmic
scale or atomic
scale only God
can know
how any
individual
will act
in response
to conditions
of extreme
stress
hardships
Copyright © Terence George Craddock
The original draft stream of consciousness source of this poem is ‘What Their Faith Will Prove To Be? : Stream Of Consciousness’.
poem by Terence George Craddock
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A Song Of Joy
as a bird on the streets
i had a natural song
which came right from my heart
in my voice
which was graced by god
as a bird on the stage
in front of a gathering
a mic frightening me
i seem to have lost my voice..yet
to keep the cheer going
iam compelled to sing a song
which is not mine
i haven't gathered a crowd
who would applaud my silence even
i sing a song without joy
to keep the cheer going
i know i don't have to try too hard
to escape the situation
i still have my wings to fly
which would take me to the meadows
a song of joy i could sing there
my soul would listen
poem by Samanyan Lakshminarayanan
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Unknown Bird
Out of the dry days
through the dusty leaves
far across the valley
those few notes never
heard here before
one fluted phrase
floating over its
wandering secret
all at once wells up
somewhere else
and is gone before it
goes on fallen into
its own echo leaving
a hollow through the air
that is dry as before
where is it from
hardly anyone
seems to have noticed it
so far but who now
would have been listening
it is not native here
that may be the one
thing we are sure of
it came from somewhere
else perhaps alone
so keeps on calling for
no one who is here
hoping to be heard
by another of its own
unlikely origin
trying once more the same few
notes that began the song
of an oriole last heard
years ago in another
existence there
it goes again tell
no one it is here
foreign as we are
who are filling the days
with a sound of our own
poem by William Stanley Merwin
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The First Spring Day
I wonder if the sap is stirring yet,
If wintry birds are dreaming of a mate,
If frozen snowdrops feel as yet the sun
And crocus fires are kindling one by one:
Sing, robin, sing;
I still am sore in doubt concerning Spring.
I wonder if the springtide of this year
Will bring another Spring both lost and dear;
If heart and spirit will find out their Spring,
Or if the world alone will bud and sing:
Sing, hope, to me;
Sweet notes, my hope, soft notes for memory.
The sap will surely quicken soon or late,
The tardiest bird will twitter to a mate;
So Spring must dawn again with warmth and bloom,
Or in this world, or in the world to come:
Sing, voice of Spring,
Till I too blossom and rejoice and sing.
poem by Christina Georgina Rossetti
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Our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different.
quote by William James
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Sonnet to the Nightingale
O nightingale that on yon blooming spray
Warblest at eve, when all the woods are still,
Thou with fresh hopes the Lover’s heart dost fill,
While the jolly Hours lead on propitious May.
Thy liquid notes that close the eye of Day,
First heard before the shallow cuckoo’s bill,
Portend success in love. O if Jove’s will
Have linked that amorous power to thy soft lay,
Now timely sing, ere the rude bird of hate
Foretell my hopeless doom, in some grove nigh;
As thou from year to year hast sung too late
For my relief, yet had’st no reason why.
Whether the Muse or Love call thee his mate,
Both them I serve, and of their train am I.
poem by John Milton
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To the Nightingale
O Nightingale! that on yon bloomy spray
Warblest at eve, when all the woods are still,
Thou with fresh hope the lover's heart dost fill,
While the jolly hours lead on propitious May.
Thy liquid notes that close the eye of day,
First heard before the shallow cuckoo's bill,
Portend success in love; O, if Jove's will
Have linked that amorous power to thy soft lay,
Now timely sing, ere the rude bird of hate
Foretell my hopeless doom in some grove nigh;
As thou from year to year hast sung too late
For my relief, yet hadst no reason why:
Whether the Muse, or Love, call thee his mate,
Both them I serve, and of their train am I.
poem by John Milton
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Sonnet 01
I
O Nightingale, that on yon bloomy Spray
Warbl'st at eeve, when all the Woods are still,
Thou with fresh hope the Lovers heart dost fill,
While the jolly hours lead on propitious May,
Thy liquid notes that close the eye of Day,
First heard before the shallow Cuccoo's bill
Portend success in love; O if Jove's will
Have linkt that amorous power to thy soft lay,
Now timely sing, ere the rude Bird of Hate
Foretell my hopeles doom in som Grove ny:
As thou from yeer to yeer hast sung too late
For my relief; yet hadst no reason why,
Whether the Muse, or Love call thee his mate,
Both them I serve, and of their train am I.
poem by John Milton
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