Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, POET AND BIRD, by CONDE BENOIST PALLEN


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

POET AND BIRD, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: To sing a fleeting song and die!
Last Line: And sing the music as their own.
Subject(s): Melodies; Poetry & Poets; Singing & Singers


To sing a fleeting song and die!
What merit in a vagrant note
That flutters through an empty sky
On idly pulsing wings afloat!

Within the ocean wastes of air
No ear to catch its slender tone,
Along the wide savannah's glare
Into the seas of silence blown.

Or if some silvern drops of sound
From its slight stream should patter down
Upon the vast earth's glittering round,
In greening field or dusty town,

Who there would heed its fleeting dew
Drunk by the thirsty soil before
The sun has climbed the morning blue,
And life crept out from sleep's dim door?

Yet song is native to the bird,
That trills in heaven a buoyant stave,
Pouring his melody unheard
Upon the trembling ether's wave.

And native, too, the poet's note,
Though none to hear the distant song
Throbbing in regions far remote
From earth and its unheedful throng.

For Beauty has a secret grace
Bestowed in solitude alone;
Both bird and poet haunt the place
About the purlieus of her zone;

And, winging through the higher ways
Close to the levels of her throne,
There catch some fragments of her lays,
And sing the music as their own.





Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!


Other Poems of Interest...
Home: PoetryExplorer.net