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: Extempore On Some Commemorations Of Thomson: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: Epigram On Seeing Miss Fontenelle In A Favourite Character: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: The Rights Of Woman: An Occasional Address. Spoken by Miss Fontenelle on her benefit night, November 26, 1792. by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: Auld Rob Morris: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: Highland Mary: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: My Wife’s A Winsome Wee Thing: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: I’ll Meet Thee On The Lea Rig: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: Fragment Of Song: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: Saw Ye Bonie Lesley: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: Love For Love: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: Bessy And Her Spinnin’ Wheel: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: The Country Lass: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: The Deil’s Awa Wi’ The Exciseman: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: The Deuks Dang O’er My Daddie: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: O Can Ye Labour Lea?: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: The Slave’s Lament: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: Kellyburn Braes: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: Lady Mary Ann: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: Sic A Wife As Willie Had: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: My Collier Laddie: by Robert Burns

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