Wings
GRAY gulls that wheeled and dipped and rose
Where tossing crests like Alpine snows
Would shimmer and entice;
A stormy petrel, Judas soul,
Dark wanderer of the waste, whose goal
No mariner hath seen;
And flaming from the vanished sun
A wondrous wing vermilion,
A bird of Paradise,
A soaring wing that shone so far
The orient horizon bar
Flushed, and the sea between
Like an Arabian carpet glowed
With changeful hues where subtly flowed
Some magical device;
And one pale plume in heaven's dim dome
Above that fairy-colored foam,
The new moon's ghostly sheen.
poem by Katharine Lee Bates
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The Stormy Petrel
A THOUSAND miles from land are we,
Tossing about on the roaring sea;
From billow to bounding billow cast,
Like fleecy snow on the stormy blast:
The sails are scatter’d abroad, like weeds,
The strong masts shake like quivering reeds,
The mighty cables, and iron chains,
The hull, which all earthly strength disdains,
They strain and they crack, and hearts like stone
Their natural hard, proud strength disown.
Up and down! Up and down!
From the base of the wave to the billow’s crown,
And midst the flashing and feathery foam
The Stormy Petrel finds a home,—
A home, if such a place may be,
For her who lives on the wide, wide sea,
On the craggy ice, in the frozen air,
And only seeketh her rocky lair
To warm her young, and to teach them spring
At once o’er the waves on their stormy wing.
O’er the Deep! O’er the Deep!
Where the whale, and the shark, and the sword-fish sleep,
Outflying the blast and the driving rain,
The Petrel telleth her tale—in vain;
For the mariner curseth the warning bird
Who bringeth him news of the storms unheard!
Ah! thus does the prophet, of good or ill,
Meet hate from the creatures he serveth still:
Yet he ne’er falters:—So, Petrel! spring
Once more o’er the waves on thy stormy wing!
poem by Barry Cornwall
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The Sea-Bird's Song
On the deep is the mariner's danger,
On the deep is the mariner's death;
Who, to fear of the tempest a stranger,
Sees the last bubble burst of his breath?
'T is the sea-bird, sea-bird, sea-bird,
Lone looker on despair;
The sea-bird, sea-bird, sea-bird,
The only witness there.
Who watches their course, who so mildly
Careen to the kiss of the breeze?
Who lists to their shrieks, who so wildly
Are clasped in the arms of the seas?
'T is the sea-bird, &c.
Who hovers on high o'er the lover,
And her who has clung to his neck?
Whose wing is the wing that can cover,
With its shadow, the foundering wreck?
'T is the sea-bird, &c.
My eye in the light of the billow,
My wing on the wake of the wave;
I shall take to my breast for a pillow,
The shroud of the fair and the brave.
I'm a sea-bird, &c.
My foot on the iceberg has lighted,
When hoarse the wild winds veer about;
My eye, when the bark is benighted,
Sees the lamp of the Light-House go out.
I'm the sea-bird, sea-bird, sea-bird,
Lone looker on despair;
The sea-bird, sea-bird, sea-bird,
The only witness there.
poem by John Gardiner Calkins Brainard
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A Parting
The year is on the wing, my love,
With tearful days and nights;
The clouds are on the wing above
With gathering swallow-flights.
The year is on the wing, my sweet,
And in the ghostly race,
With patter of unnumbered feet,
The dead leaves fly apace.
The year is on the wing, and shakes
The last rose from its tree;
And I, whose heart in parting breaks,
Must bid adieu to thee.
poem by Mathilde Blind
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Venetian Night
Her eyes in the darkness shone, in the twilight shed
By the gondola bent like the darkness over her head.
Softly the gondola rocked, lights came and went;
A white glove shone as her black fan lifted and leant
Where the silk of her dress, the blue of a bittern's wing,
Rustled against my knee, and, murmuring
The sweet slow hesitant English of a child,
Her voice was articulate laughter, her soul smiled.
Softly the gondola rocked, lights came and went;
From the sleeping houses a shadow of slumber leant
Over our heads like a wing, and the dim lagoon,
Rustling with silence, slumbered under the moon.
Softly the gondola rocked, and a pale light came
Over the waters, mild as a silver flame;
She lay back, thrilling with smiles, in the twilight shed
By the gondola bend like the darkness over her head;
I saw her eyes shine subtly, then close awhile:
I remember her silence, and, in the night, her smile.
poem by Arthur Symons
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The Birds
Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings, and not one of them is forgotten before God.
~ Luke, xii, 6.
TRIBES of the air! whose favored race
May wander through the realms of space,
Free guests of earth and sky;
In form, in plumage, and in song,
What gifts of nature mark your throng
With bright variety!
Nor differ less your forms, your flight,
Your dwellings hid from hostile sight,
And the wild haunts ye love;
Birds of the gentle beak! how dear
Your wood-note, to the wanderer's ear,
In shadowy vale or grove!
Far other scenes, remote, sublime,
Where swain or hunter may not climb,
The mountain-eagle seeks;
Alone he reigns, a monarch there,
Scarce will the chamois' footstep dare
Ascend his Alpine peaks.
Others there are, that make their home
Where the white billows roar and foam,
Around th' o'erhanging rock;
Fearless they skim the angry wave,
Or sheltered in their sea-beat cave,
The tempest's fury mock.
Where Afric's burning realm expands,
The ostrich haunts the desert sands,
Parched by the blaze of day;
The swan, where northern rivers glide,
Through the tall reeds that fringe their tide,
Floats graceful on her way.
The condor, where the Andes tower,
Spreads his broad wing of pride and power,
And many a storm defies;
Bright in the orient realms of morn,
All beauty's richest hues adorn
The Bird of Paradise.
Some, amidst India's grove of palm,
And spicy forests breathing balm,
Weave soft their pendent nest;
Some, deep in western wilds, display
Their fairy form and plumage gay,
In rainbow colors drest.
Others no varied song may pour,
May boast no eagle-plume to soar,
No tints of light may wear;
Yet, know, our Heavenly Father guides
The least of these, and well provides
For each, with tenderest care.
Shall He not then thy guardian be?
Will not his aid extend to thee?
Oh! safely may'st thou rest!?
Trust in his love, and e'en should pain,
Should sorrow tempt thee to complain,
Know, what He wills is best!
poem by Felicia Dorothea Hemans
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Winter Song
The browns, the olives, and the yellows died,
And were swept up to heaven; where they glowed
Each dawn and set of sun till Christmastide,
And when the land lay pale for them, pale-snowed,
Fell back, and down the snow-drifts flamed and flowed.
From off your face, into the winds of winter,
The sun-brown and the summer-gold are blowing;
But they shall gleam with spiritual glinter,
When paler beauty on your brows falls snowing,
And through those snows my looks shall be soft-going.
poem by Wilfred Owen
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The Immortal
BEAUTY is still immortal in our eyes;
When sways no more the spirit-haunted reed,
When the wild grape shall build
No more her canopies,
When blows no more the moon-gray thistle seed,
When the last bell has lulled the white flocks home,
When the last eve has stilled
The wandering wing and touched the dying foam,
When the last moon burns low, and, spark by spark,
The little worlds die out along the dark,–
Beauty that rosed the moth-wing, touched the land
With clover-horns and delicate faint flowers,
Beauty that bade the showers
Beat on the violet's face,
Shall hold the eternal heavens within their place
And hear new stars come singing from God's hand.
poem by Marjorie Lowry Christie Pickthall
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Broken-wing Angel
Out of a sapphire blue heaven
I fell down to earth,
while I reached with my right hand
for the stars.
Michael and Gabriel was with me
when a thunder stroke
clapped blinding out of the darkness
and hit my right wing and singe it.
The forces of darkness
was suddenly everywhere around me
and with a last desperate swish
of my left wing
and with a flaming sword
I tried to stop
that they lay there hands
on a child in Clanwilliam.
Today there’s a marble statue
at that child’s grave
and no man knows,
why I protect that piece of earth
with a broken wing.
poem by Gert Strydom
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To a Young Poet
Time cannot break the bird's wing from the bird.
Bird and wing together
Go down, one feather.
No thing that ever flew,
Not the lark, not you,
Can die as others do.
poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay
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Wings
Pearl-gray is the sky,
And high within it, sailing by,
Three sea-gulls fly.
Pearl-white are they
Against the sky's obscurer gray—
Sea-foam astray.
Gulls, sea-gulls white,
Drift of the day, drift of the night,
Mine be your flight!
Out—out, with you
Beyond the noise, into the blue!
Ah—if I knew!
poem by Harriet Monroe
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Not probable—The barest Chance
346
Not probable—The barest Chance—
A smile too few—a word too much
And far from Heaven as the Rest—
The Soul so close on Paradise—
What if the Bird from journey far—
Confused by Sweets—as Mortals—are—
Forget the secret of His wing
And perish—but a Bough between—
Oh, Groping feet—
Oh Phantom Queen!
poem by Emily Dickinson
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The Indian Springs
I KNOW a shady hollow 'neath the pines,
Rich floored with velvet moss and trailing vines,
Where grouping ferns grow lusty, tall, and green,
With sipping from the bowl o'er which they lean;
And crimson berries on the margin cling,
Like drops of blood about the Indian spring.
On this same spot these many years ago
A graceful figure knelt and, bending low,
Wrist-deep in moss, one hand curved to a cup,
The water to her scarlet lips dipped up.
A heron's wing drooped from her dusky hair,
Which draped her rich-hued cheeks and shoulders bare.
Swift, stealthy footsteps took her by surprise;
She started, flushed, and met his eager eyes,—
A noble figure, young and lithe and tall,
With one proud eagle feather crowning all.
A pause, a word, and lo! the heron's wing
Brushed with the eagle's there above the spring.
Two cruel eyes gleamed from the piny shade,
Fixed on the bended heads of man and maid;
Sudden, a gray goose feather with a twang
Of hate and envy from the darkness sprang.
One shrilling cry—the heron wing was fled;
Low lay the eagle plume; the spring ran red.
The years have gone; new mosses veil the ground,
New ferns, new vines:—but here the spring I found,
And here the gray goose shalt its story told,—
A heart of flint 'neath moss and years of mold
And vines to which the blood-red berries cling,
I found an arrow by the Indian spring.
poem by Abbie Farwell Brown from The New England Magazine / Volume 22, Issue 4 (1897)
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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A Rose Arose
Of all that nature’s garden grows
the fairest flower is the Rose,
bending to each breeze that blows.
Rose beauty, joy, together sows, -
‘Tis true, as everybody knows, -
inadequately penned in prose.
For from her crown all colour flows,
her petals pink or red she shows,
with white or amber, golden glows.
‘Tis said, or so the story goes,
her spiny thorns are elf arrows
to scare the sprites from the meadows.
In slumber see her heart enclose
bee’s happiness, in sweet repose,
unsullied by harsh winter snows.
Both dark and bright, white, virgin shows, -
the rose from Paradise arose,
and on Time's wing she blows, she blows.
poem by Jonathan Robin
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Morning
The mist has left the greening plain,
The dew-drops shine like fairy rain,
The coquette rose awakes again
Her lovely self adorning.
The Wind is hiding in the trees,
A sighing, soothing, laughing tease,
Until the rose says "Kiss me, please,"
'Tis morning, 'tis morning.
With staff in hand and careless-free,
The wanderer fares right jauntily,
For towns and houses are, thinks he,
For scorning, for scorning.
My soul is swift upon the wing,
And in its deeps a song I bring;
Come, Love, and we together sing,
"'Tis morning, 'tis morning."
poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar
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Sympathy
I know what the caged bird feels, alas!
When the sun is bright on the upland slopes;
When the wind stirs soft through the springing grass,
And the river flows like a stream of glass;
When the first bird sings and the first bud opes,
And the faint perfume from its chalice steals--
I know what the caged bird feels!
I know why the caged bird beats his wing
Till its blood is red on the cruel bars;
For he must fly back to his perch and cling
When he fain would be on the bough a-swing;
And a pain still throbs in the old, old scars
And they pulse again with a keener sting--
I know why he beats his wing!
I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,
When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,--
When he beats his bars and he would be free;
It is not a carol of joy or glee,
But a prayer that he sends from his heart's deep core,
But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings--
I know why the caged bird sings!
poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar
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Broken Down Angel
She used to be someone you could depend on
To brighten up your coldest winter day
But the one she leaned upon
Let her down, noow has moved on
And morning brings another empty day
Now shes only a broken down angel
Shes only a bird thats broke her wing
Shes only someone, somone whos gone wrong
Shes only a child thats lost her way
She used to be a girl of simple pleasures
A breath of spring to chase your blues away
But now she bears a cross, for a love that she has lost
No sunshine in her life just clouds of gray
Now shes only a broken down angel
Shes only a bird thats broke her wing
Shes only someone, somone whos gone wrong
Shes only a child thats lost her way
Shes only a broken down angel
Shes only a bird thats broke her wing
Shes only someone, somone whos gone wrong
Shes only a child thats lost her way
Now shes only a broken down angel
Shes only a bird thats broke her wing
Shes only someone, somone whos gone wrong
Shes only a child thats lost her way
song performed by by Nazareth
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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I smell your perfume on the wind
I smell your perfume on the wind
And cry a pool of tears
And sit beside it
And fish for our lost love
But i'm living an illusion
The waters are too salty for anything to exist
You're love was written on rose petals
Perfumed in paradise
Delicate and fine as a butterflies' wing
Too fine for the roughness
Of unyielding minds and opinions
Of people who have never tasted of pure love
Who never stroked with there lips
A marble smooth cheek such as yours
Who never clasp a hand so tight
That they were afraid to let go
That letting go was letting go forever
Who never looked in an eye
That shone back the love it received
Who never lay beside a silken-skinned body
And smiled
And counted himself a king with a queen
Who never had a bed
That was a raft of pure love
On a sea, stained with prejudice and jealously
Who never knew of a love so pure
That being without it
Was not being
That you turn to a shadow
A piece of mist
At the mercy of the winds
A formless wandering creature
For being without you I am that creature now
For my love for you
Is written in granite
By the fire of pure love
A white flamed fire of pure love
That no being can erase
That no seed of hate
Can grow on
That no prejudice or jealously
Will cover or wear away
I never chose you
You never chose me
Love chose us
It made the match
And bound us with a chain
A chain of magical links
Each an angels ' wing
Each wing given freely for us
Each a token of love
That blossomed
And flowered into pure love
A love of loves
In a paradise of paradises
A place where we ran away to
A place where we weren't
Afraid to be ourselves
To unite and gel and become one
poem by Paul Larmour
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Dryden and Pope
Of our Laureate we now do sing-
His youthful muse had daring wing,
He then despised Baronhood,
And sang 'twas noble to be good.
None sang like him of knights of old,
He England's glory did uphold,
In wondrous song he hath arrayed.
Glorious charge of light brigade.
And he hath the people's benison.
Greatest of living poets, Tennyson.
Genius of Dryden and of Pope,
Both did take a mighty scope ;
The first he Virgil did translate,
The second showed us Troy's fate.
On English themes they loved to sing,
And high their muses flight did wing.
poem by James McIntyre
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The Gift
A poor orphan girl named maria
Was walking to market one day
She stopped for a rest by the roadside
Where a bird with a broken wing lay
A few moments passed till she saw it
For its feathers were covered with sand
But soon clean and wrapped it was travelling
In the warmth of marias small hand
She happily gave her last peso
On a cage made of rushes and twine
She fed it loose corn from the market
And watched it grow stronger with time
Now the christmas eve service was coming
And the church shone with tinsel and light
And all of the townfolks brought presents
To lay by the manger that night
There were diamonds and incense
And perfumes
In packages fit for a king
But for one ragged bird in a small cage
Maria had nothing to bring
She waited till just before midnight
So no one would see her go in
And crying she knelt by the manger
For her gift was unworthy of him
Then a voice spoke to her through the darkness
Maria, what brings you to me
If the bird in the cage is your offering
Open the door and let me see
Though she trembled, she did as he asked her
And out of the cage the bird flew
Soaring up into the rafters
On a wing that had healed good as new
Just then the midnight bells rang out
And the little bird started to sing
A song that no words could recapture
Whose beauty was fit for a king
Now maria felt blessed just to listen
To that cascade of notes sweet and long
As her offerings was lifted to heaven
By the very first nightingales song
song performed by by Garth Brooks
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Elegy
Since I lost you, my darling, the sky has come near,
And I am of it, the small sharp stars are quite near,
The white moon going among them like a white bird among snow-berries,
And the sound of her gently rustling in heaven like a bird I hear.
And I am willing to come to you now, my dear,
As a pigeon lets itself off from a cathedral dome
To be lost in the haze of the sky, I would like to come,
And be lost out of sight with you, and be gone like foam.
For I am tired, my dear, and if I could lift my feet,
My tenacious feet from off the dome of the earth
To fall like a breath within the breathing wind
Where you are lost, what rest, my love, what rest!
poem by David Herbert Lawrence
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