Famous Bird Poems

If you're a poet and want to go down in the annals of history, it might perhaps interest you to dash off a bird sonnet or two. Students may be studying them in school centuries hence.

One of the more famous bird poems is a Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) composition entitled To A Skylark.

"Hail to thee blithe spirit,
bird though never wert ...."

Another great poet of the Romantic Era, John Keats (1795-1821), had earlier penned the equally famous Ode to A Nightingale, which is more of a study in mortality than the Shelley poem, where we are meant to admire and be awed by the spirit that Shelley feels is the lark. An audio reading of Nightingale may be heard on a netlinks lesson in poetry appreciation by Michael Glyn Long. Maybe I should take the lesson and learn to appreciate this poem, because I really can't stand it.

On the other side of the Atlantic, later in the 19th century, Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) wrote the poem, A Bird Came Down. which is a clever little piece that describes her observations of a bird that she was evidently very close to. In the beginning of the poem, Ms. Dickinson informs the reader that the bird didn't know she was there, but she was close enough to describe his eyes as "frightened little beads" and, after even closer observation of his behavior, she decided to offer him a crumb. The bird, of course, flew away. While very little of her poetry was published during her lifetime, this has become one of Ms. Dickinson's most frequently anthologized poems.

Scary and ominous birds abound in poetry. Even before the above mentioned poems were written, Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) wrote about the albatross in Rime of the Ancient Mariner. As a result of this compelling tale, the unfortunate bird came to symbolize a burden and a curse, Although the bird was initially a good omen, the mariner had to go kill it and change all that. An excellent DVD on Coleridge's life with an incredibly awesome version of The Ancient Mariner is available at Amazon, entitled Pandaemonium.