The Owl And The Sparrow
Read "The Owl And The Sparrow" by John Trumbull, with a complete literary analysis exploring wisdom, pride, argument, satire, animal symbolism, and the contrasting perspectives of the owl and sparrow as a humorous commentary on human behavior and judgment.
The Owl And The Sparrow by John Trumbull
In elder days, in Saturn's prime,
Ere baldness seized the head of Time,
While truant Jove, in infant pride,
Play'd barefoot on Olympus' side,
Each thing on earth had power to chatter,
And spoke the mother tongue of nature.
Each stock or stone could prate and gabble,
Worse than ten labourers of Babel.
Along the street, perhaps you'd see
A Post disputing with a Tree,
And mid their arguments of weight,
A Goose sit umpire of debate.
Each Dog you met, though speechless now,
Would make his compliments and bow,
And every Swine with congees come,
To know how did all friends at home.
Each Block sublime could make a speech,
In style and eloquence as rich,
And could pronounce it and could pen it,
As well as Chatham in the senate.
Nor prose alone.--In these young times,
Each field was fruitful too in rhymes;
Each feather'd minstrel felt the passion,
And every wind breathed inspiration.
Each Bullfrog croak'd in loud bombastic,
Each Monkey chatter'd Hudibrastic;
Each Cur, endued with yelping nature,
Could outbark Churchill's[2] self in satire;
Each Crow in prophecy delighted,
Each Owl, you saw, was second-sighted,
Each Goose a skilful politician,
Each Ass a gifted met'physician,
Could preach in wrath 'gainst laughing rogues,
Write Halfway-covenant Dialogues,[3]
And wisely judge of all disputes
In commonwealths of men or brutes.
'Twas then, in spring a youthful Sparrow
Felt the keen force of Cupid's arrow:
For Birds, as Æsop's tales avow,
Made love then, just as men do now,
And talk'd of deaths and flames and darts,
And breaking necks and losing hearts;
And chose from all th' aerial kind,
Not then to tribes, like Jews, confined
The story tells, a lovely Thrush
Had smit him from a neigh'bring bush,
Where oft the young coquette would play,
And carol sweet her siren lay:
She thrill'd each feather'd heart with love,
And reign'd the Toast of all the grove.
He felt the pain, but did not dare
Disclose his passion to the fair;
For much he fear'd her conscious pride
Of race, to noble blood allied.
Her grandsire's nest conspicuous stood,
Mid loftiest branches of the wood,
In airy height, that scorn'd to know
Each flitting wing that waved below.
So doubting, on a point so nice
He deem'd it best to take advice.
Hard by there dwelt an aged Owl,
Of all his friends the gravest fowl;
Who from the cares of business free,
Lived, hermit, in a hollow tree;
To solid learning bent his mind,
In trope and syllogism he shined,
'Gainst reigning follies spent his railing;
Too much a Stoic--'twas his failing.
Hither for aid our Sparrow came,
And told his errand and his name,
With panting breath explain'd his case,
Much trembling at the sage's face;
And begg'd his Owlship would declare
If love were worth a wise one's care.
The grave Owl heard the weighty cause,
And humm'd and hah'd at every pause;
Then fix'd his looks in sapient plan,
Stretch'd forth one foot, and thus began.
"My son, my son, of love beware,
And shun the cheat of beauty's snare;
That snare more dreadful to be in,
Than huntsman's net, or horse-hair gin.
"By others' harms learn to be wise,"
As ancient proverbs well advise.
Each villany, that nature breeds,
From females and from love proceeds.
'Tis love disturbs with fell debate
Of man and beast the peaceful state:
Men fill the world with war's alarms,
When female trumpets sound to arms;
The commonwealth of dogs delight
For beauties, as for bones, to fight.
Love hath his tens of thousands slain,
And heap'd with copious death the plain:
Samson, with ass's jaw to aid,
Ne'er peopled thus th'infernal shade.
"Nor this the worst; for he that's dead,
With love no more will vex his head.
'Tis in the rolls of fate above,
That death's a certain cure for love;
A noose can end the cruel smart;
The lover's leap is from a cart.
But oft a living death they bear,
Scorn'd by the proud, capricious fair.
The fair to sense pay no regard,
And beauty is the fop's reward;
They slight the generous hearts' esteem,
And sigh for those, who fly from them.
Just when your wishes would prevail,
Some rival bird with gayer tail,
Who sings his strain with sprightlier note,
And chatters praise with livelier throat,
Shall charm your flutt'ring fair one down,
And leave your choice, to hang or drown.
Ev'n I, my son, have felt the smart;
A Pheasant won my youthful heart.
For her I tuned the doleful lay,[4]
For her I watch'd the night away;
In vain I told my piteous case,
And smooth'd my dignity of face;
In vain I cull'd the studied phrase,
And sought hard words in beauty's praise.
Her, not my charms nor sense could move,
For folly is the food of love.
Each female scorns our serious make,
"Each woman is at heart a rake."[5]
Thus Owls in every age have said,
Since our first parent-owl was made;
Thus Pope and Swift, to prove their sense,
Shall sing, some twenty ages hence;
Then shall a man of little fame,
One ** **** sing the same.
The Owl And The Sparrow Summary and Analysis
John Trumbull casts the poem as a comic fable told in a mock-epic voice, beginning with a whimsical myth of an earlier age when everything in nature could talk, reason, and even argue like human beings. That extravagant opening matters because it prepares the reader for a world where birds and beasts mirror society, and where intellectual pretension, courtship, and social rank are all fair targets for satire.
From that broad comic universe, the poem narrows to a single plot: a young Sparrow has fallen in love with a Thrush, but he doubts whether her lofty breeding will permit a match. He seeks advice from an old Owl, who responds not with wisdom but with an absurdly gloomy sermon against love, women, and desire. The Owl's speech is both funny and revealing. He sounds learned and authoritative, yet his counsel is riddled with exaggeration, bitterness, and self-contradiction. By the end, the poem has quietly exposed the gap between true judgment and the pose of wisdom, while also suggesting that romantic longing makes even the most rational creatures vulnerable to folly.
Tone in The Owl And The Sparrow
Trumbull's tone is amused, nimble, and pointedly satirical; he writes like someone delighted by verbal cleverness but equally intent on exposing pretension. The emotional atmosphere for the reader is playful at first, then increasingly ironic as the Owl's solemn warnings become more absurd and overbearing. Beneath the comedy, there is a faintly skeptical mood that questions whether reason can ever fully master appetite, vanity, or affection.
This literary analysis was generated with AI and may contain interpretive differences. Provide your analysis in the comments section.
Themes in The Owl And The Sparrow
- Love as folly - The Sparrow's attraction to the Thrush is treated as a serious emotional experience, but the poem places it inside a comic frame that makes love look irrational, humiliating, and difficult to govern.
- Satire of false wisdom - The Owl appears to be a sage, yet his advice is a bundle of prejudice, hyperbole, and wounded vanity. Trumbull uses him to mock people who sound profound while merely repeating clever cynicism.
- Social rank and pretension - The Thrush's high nest and noble lineage turn courtship into a parody of class anxiety. The poem hints that status can shape desire and insecurity just as strongly among birds as among humans.
- Human society reflected in nature - By filling the natural world with lawyers, politicians, preachers, and lovers in animal form, the poem suggests that human habits are not so different from those of creatures in an Aesop-like fable.
- Gender suspicion and romantic frustration - The Owl's bitter attack on female fickleness reflects a familiar satirical stance, but the poem also exposes it as the grumbling of someone who has not recovered from rejection.
- Mock-heroic comedy - Elevated language is applied to trivial or ridiculous subjects, turning a small bird's love trouble into an occasion for grand speeches, learned references, and playful overstatement.
Literary Devices in The Owl And The Sparrow
- Mock epic - The poem inflates a simple courtship story into a grand, pseudo-heroic performance, using lofty language and formal argument to make the situation comic.
- Personification - Animals, objects, and abstract forces are given human speech and social roles, allowing Trumbull to satirize human behavior through the natural world.
- Allusion - References to Saturn, Jove, Babel, Chatham, Churchill, Samson, Pope, and Swift create a crowded learned backdrop that deepens the satire and heightens the poem's comic ambition.
- Couplet form and rhyme - The tight heroic couplets give the poem brisk momentum and sharpen its wit, making the Owl's absurd pronouncements sound polished even when they are ridiculous.
- Ironic characterization - The Owl is introduced as grave and scholarly, but his speech reveals emotional bias and overblown pessimism, so the poem quietly undercuts his authority.
- Hyperbole - Exaggerated claims about universal chatter, the power of love, and the disasters caused by women and desire amplify the comic tone and expose the unreliability of the Owl's thinking.
- Parody of learned discourse - The Owl's argument borrows the shape of philosophical reasoning and moral advice, but it is comic in its distortion, turning rational discourse into self-important nonsense.
- Fable-like allegory - The birds function as social types, so the poem can comment on courtship, vanity, and prudence without naming human individuals directly.
Symbolism in The Owl And The Sparrow
- The Owl - The Owl symbolizes pedantic wisdom that is dark, cautious, and emotionally compromised; he looks like a philosopher but behaves like a disappointed lover.
- The Sparrow - The Sparrow suggests youthful vulnerability and earnest desire, a small creature whose tenderness makes him an easy subject for the harshness of the world.
- The Thrush - The Thrush represents beauty, social confidence, and romantic distance, especially as her high nest marks her as belonging to a more exalted station.
- The nest in the loftiest branches - The elevated nest symbolizes pride of lineage and social separation, turning geography into a sign of status.
- The hollow tree - The Owl's dwelling suggests withdrawal, isolation, and a life spent apart from ordinary warmth or companionship.
- The arrow of Cupid - Cupid's arrow stands for the sudden, involuntary onset of love, an image that makes desire feel both playful and dangerous.
Historical Context of The Owl And The Sparrow
John Trumbull belongs to the Anglo-American neoclassical tradition, and the poem reflects the period's love of wit, formal couplets, classical allusion, and moral satire. Its playful animal allegory also draws on older fable traditions associated with Aesop and later satiric writers, while its elevated comic style recalls the mock-heroic habits of eighteenth-century verse.
The poem's language and references place it firmly in a literary culture that valued learning, imitation, and social satire. Its jokes about political speech, theological controversy, and literary manners also fit a world in which poems often responded to public discourse by turning it into comedy. The result is a work shaped by the habits of Enlightenment-era wit: skeptical, urbanely learned, and keenly aware of human vanity.
Poems Similar to The Owl And The Sparrow
- The Hind and the Panther - John Dryden
- The Rape of the Lock - Alexander Pope
- Hudibras - Samuel Butler
- The Owl and the Nightingale - Anonymous
- The Fable of the Bees - Bernard Mandeville