Classic and Contemporary Poetry
BIRD O'ER THE BATTLEFIELD, by ISABEL FISKE CONANT First Line: Bird o'er the battlefield, singing in the lull of thunder Last Line: Is it that christ, walking storm-waves of trenches, comes near? Subject(s): Birds; Soldiers; War; World War I; First World War | ||||||||
Bird o'er the battlefield, singing in lull of the thunder, What gave you song? Oh, be migrant; be fleet-winged and pass! Though year to year you have mated and brooded hereunder, Seek not your safety this spring in this blood-matted grass. You that last Maytime sang unto the west and its glamor, Speed while you may, while your wings are unwounded and strong. Think you to nest in these trenches? This merciless clamor, Think you to drown its least shrapnel with lyrical song? Yet, if you stray, like an innocent child in a gutter, Wounded are here, whose delirium shall hear you, and see Brooks in the farms of their youth, and whose fever shall mutter Name of a girl, of a mother, of Christ of the Tree. What, spite of shrapnel and danger, has made you enraptured? Seeing and hearing what man may not see and not hear? Bird o'er the battlefield, what has your tiny heart captured? Is it that Christ, walking storm-waves of trenches, comes near? | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...D'ANNUNZIO by ERNEST HEMINGWAY 1915: THE TRENCHES by CONRAD AIKEN TO OUR PRESIDENT by KATHARINE LEE BATES THE HORSES by KATHARINE LEE BATES CHILDREN OF THE WAR by KATHARINE LEE BATES THE U-BOAT CREWS by KATHARINE LEE BATES THE RED CROSS NURSE by KATHARINE LEE BATES WAR PROFITS by KATHARINE LEE BATES THE UNCHANGEABLE by EDMUND CHARLES BLUNDEN A QUEEN'S LAMENT by ISABEL FISKE CONANT |
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