Famous Birdsong Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous Birdsong poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous birdsong poems. These examples illustrate what a famous birdsong poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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Stone Villages

by Joseph Brodsky
The stone-built villages of England.
A cathedral bottled in a pub window.
Cows dispersed across fields.
Monuments to kings.

A man in a moth-eaten suit
sees a train off heading like everything here 
for the sea 
smiles at his daughter leaving for the East.
A whistle blows.

And the endless sky over the tiles
grows bluer as swelling birdsong fills.
And the clearer the song is heard 
the smaller...Read more of this...

Slough

by John Betjeman
 Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough!
It isn't fit for humans now, 
There isn't grass to graze a cow. 
Swarm over, Death!

Come, bombs and blow to smithereens
Those air -conditioned, bright canteens, 
Tinned fruit, tinned meat, tinned milk, tinned beans, 
Tinned minds, tinned breath. 

Mess up the mess they call a town—
A house for ninety-seven down
And once a week a...Read more of this...

Directions

by Billy Collins
 You know the brick path in the back of the house,
the one you see from the kitchen window, 
the one that bends around the far end of the garden
where all the yellow primroses are?
And you know how if you leave the path
and walk into the woods you come 
to a heap of rocks, probably pushed
down during the horrors of...Read more of this...

Morning Worship

by Mark Van Doren
 I wake and hearing it raining.
Were I dead, what would I give
Lazily to lie here,
Like this, and live?

Or better yet: birdsong,
Brightening and spreading --
How far would I come then
To be at the world's wedding?

Now that I lie, though,
Listening, living,
(Oh, but not forever,
Oh, end arriving)

How shall I praise them:
All the sweet beings
Eternally that outlive
Me and my dying?

Mountains, I mean; wind,...Read more of this...

Letter From Kirkheaton

by Barry Tebb
 I have no camera but imagination’s tinted glass

I cannot pass this crumbling dry stone wall

Without a break to catch the vistas of the chain of Pennine hills

That splash their shades of colour like mercury in the rising glass.



The June sun focuses upon the vivid grass,

The elder’s pale amber, the Victoria Tower’s finger

On the pulse of past shared walks, Emley’s...Read more of this...

Bored

by Margaret Atwood
 All those times I was bored
out of my mind. Holding the log
while he sawed it. Holding
the string while he measured, boards,
distances between things, or pounded
stakes into the ground for rows and rows
of lettuces and beets, which I then (bored)
weeded. Or sat in the back
of the car, or sat still in boats,
sat, sat, while at the prow, stern, wheel
he drove,...Read more of this...

Paragraphs from a Day-Book

by Marilyn Hacker
 Cherry-ripe: dark sweet burlats, scarlet reverchons
firm-fleshed and tart in the mouth
bigarreaux, peach-and-white napoléons
as the harvest moves north
from Provence to the banks of the Yonne
(they grow napoléons in Washington
State now). Before that, garriguettes,
from Périgord, in wooden punnets
afterwards, peaches: yellow-fleshed, white,
moss-skinned ruby pêches de vigne.
The vendors cry out "Taste," my appetite
does, too.. Birdsong, from an unseen
source on this street-island, too close...Read more of this...

Prospects

by Anthony Hecht
 We have set out from here for the sublime
Pastures of summer shade and mountain stream;
I have no doubt we shall arrive on time.

Is all the green of that enameled prime
A snapshot recollection or a dream?
We have set out from here for the sublime

Without provisions, without one thin dime,
And yet, for all our clumsiness, I deem
It certain that we shall...Read more of this...

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