Death of the Bird

For every bird there is this last migration;

Once more the cooling year kindles her heart;

With a warm passage to the summer station

Love pricks the course in lights across the chart.

Year after year a speck on the map, divided

By a whole hemisphere, summons her to come;

Season after season, sure and safely guided,

Going away she is also coming home.

And being home, memory becomes a passion

With which she feeds her brood and straws her nest,

Aware of ghosts that haunt the heart’s possession

And exiled love mourning within the breast.

The sands are green with a mirage of valleys;

The palm tree casts a shadow not its own;

Down the long architrave of temple or palace

Blows a cool air from moorland scarps of stone.

And day by day the whisper of love grows stronger;

That delicate voice, more urgent with despair,

Custom and fear constraining her no longer,

Drives her at last on the waste leagues of air.

A vanishing speck in those inane dominions,

Single and frail, uncertain of her place,

Alone in the bright host of her companions,

Lost in the blue unfriendliness of space.

She feels it close now, the appointed season;

The invisible thread is broken as she flies;

Suddenly, without warning, without reason,

The guiding spark of instinct winks and dies.

Try as she will, the trackless world delivers

No way, the wilderness of light no sign;

Immense,complex contours of hills and rivers

Mock her small wisdom with their vast design.

The darkness rises from the eastern valleys,

And the winds buffet her with their hungry breath,

And the great earth, with neither grief nor malice,

Receives the tiny burden of her death.

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Poems in English 

• Robert Burns: The Flowery Banks Of Cree: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: Young Jamie, Pride Of A’ The Plain: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: A Red, Red Rose: [Hear Red, Red Rose] by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: A Vision: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: The Minstrel At Lincluden: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: A Fiddler In The North: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: Wilt Thou Be My Dearie?: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: Remorseful Apology: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: Complimentary Epigram On Maria Riddell: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: Address Spoken by Miss Fontenelle on her Benefit Night, December 4th, 1793, at the Theatre, Dumfries.: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: My Spouse Nancy: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: On Mrs. Riddell’s Birthday: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: Thine Am I, My Faithful Fair: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: Deluded Swain, The Pleasure: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: Where Are The Joys I have Met?: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: Thou Hast Left Me Ever, Jamie: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: Down The Burn, Davie: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: Behold The Hour, The Boat Arrive: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: Robert Bruce’s March To Bannockburn: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: Dainty Davie: by Robert Burns

More external links (open in a new tab):

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Yandex – the best search engine for searches in Russian (and the best overall image search engine, in any language, anywhere)

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Ecosia – a search engine that supposedly… plants trees

Duckduckgo – the real alternative and a search engine that actually works. Without much censorship or partisan politics.

Yahoo– yes, it’s still around, amazingly, miraculously, incredibly, but now it seems to be powered by Bing.

 

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