Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, A THRUSH IN SEVEN DIALS (A FACT OF NATURE IS HERE DISREGARDED), by NORMAN ROWLAND GALE


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

A THRUSH IN SEVEN DIALS (A FACT OF NATURE IS HERE DISREGARDED), by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Here in this den of smoke and filth
Last Line: To stir your hearts and dim your eyes.
Subject(s): Birds; Cages; Thrushes


HERE in this den of smoke and filth
They caged a thrush's broken heart;
Yet when the sun, as if by stealth,
Shone, or a milkman's rattling cart
Shook all her narrow wickerwork,
The bird would chirp, and very soon
To passing Jew, or Dane, or Turk
Sing some remembered forest-tune.

Alas! the halting notes that rang
In emulation of her mate
Who in the shadowed evening sang
Beside the five-barred spinney-gate
Were thin and false. But yet the song
Gained pathos from its lessened spell,
Since this proclaimed aloud the wrong
Of shutting thrushes up in hell!

But sometimes, heartened to forget
The crime of her captivity,
The songster o'er the city's fret
Flung strains of bird-divinity,
And tried to stretch her tattered wings,
And poise above the constant perch,
And drown the poor imaginings
Of sparrows on the murky church.

She marvelled much that they so small,
So scant of music, plainly drest,
Should swoop at will from wall to wall,
While she, whose melody and breast
Had fluttered whitethroats in the wood,
Should hang upon a rusty nail
And chirp to great-eyed boys who stood
To hear her sing in rain or hail.

As if upon the very brink
Of freedom, she would sometimes fill
The air with joy, and seem to think
The road a stream, the church a hill.
Thus lifted from the truth, she sang
The song that never knows defeat,
Till all the grimy district rang
With tales of moss and meadowsweet.

And then for days she would not shake
A single utterance from her store,
Despite the outcast imps who spake,
Like Oliver, to ask for more.
In fluffy listlessness she sat
And dreamed of all the grassy west—
How she had feared the parson's cat,
And how she built the earliest nest!

Sometimes a French piano hurled
Metallic scales adown the street,
That seemed to buffet all her world,
By being hard and shrill and fleet!
No maddened music of this kind
Could tempt the thrush to rivalry:
She pecked an inch of apple-rind
And waited till the din went by.

There, from a tiny patch of sun,
She made an April for her heart!
Imagined twigs, and sat thereon,
Though shaken by the coaling cart.
And there she wondered how to build
As once she built, when free to roam,
Because her aching heart was filled
With dreams of motherhood and home.

And if perchance disdain or pride
Or brooding made her chantings fail,
Sing, bird! an ugly villain cried,
And swung her fiercely on her nail.
This was the man whose crafty net
And craftier brain had meshed her wings—
'Twas not for such her music set
The song of her imaginings!

Ah! leave them in the wilderness,
Or in the bush, or in the brake.
Let them in liberty possess
The haunts God fashioned for their sake!
And all the glories of their throats
Shall sound more glorious when they rise
In flights and waves of noble notes
To stir your hearts and dim your eyes.





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