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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE COMMONWEALTH OF BIRDS, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Listen, gallants, to my words
Last Line: See them, when the sky doth fall.


Listen, gallants, to my words,
I sing the Commonwealth of Birds.
A Buzzard doth command the town;
Gulls are brethren of the gown;
Great, but not Moguls they be,
Of the land, and not the sea.

There is, in every ward of these,
Widgeons placed for deputies:
The citizens have merry lives;
They Cuckoos are, who take to wives,
Pretty Parrots, Blackbirds, Rails,
Many of them pure Wagtails.

Each parish constable is a Daw;
Wry-neck, watchmen with club law,
Who, taking any Owls by night,
Straight convey them to the Kite,
Who keeps the Counter, and indeed
Knows on Poultry how to feed.

Diverse gentlemen there are,
A Robin-red-breast and a Stare;
Canary birds are not a few;
Rooks have crept among them too;
Dunghill Cocks, that will be beat;
Godwits, only good to eat.

Would you know the lawyers? These
Are a nest of Goldfinches:
But few men there are that know
The Physician from a Crow;
Yet Bitter many of them are,
And the good, like Black-swans, rare.

If any chance to ask of me,
Where this Commonwealth should be,
I answer, 'tis above the Moon,
'Twas mine by revelation;
There the Larks are, and we shall
See them, when the sky doth fall.





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