What is this poetry ? A mortal mind
Made visible;a caged bird?
Nay more:it is a spiritleft behind
Nailed by the piercing word.
--
On a poem ,XC Brief Words The Moray Press,Edinburgh 1935Soutar,William
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I know what the caged bird feels, alas!
When the sun is bright on the upland slopes;
When the wind blows soft through the springing grass,
And the river floats like a stream of glass;
When the first bird sings and the first bud opes,
And the faint perfume from its chalice steals—
I know what the caged bird feels!
I know why the caged bird beats his wing
Till its blood is red on the cruel bars;
For he must fly back to his perch and cling
When he fain would be on the bough a-swing;
And a pain still throbs in the old, old scars
And they pulse again with a keener sting—
I know why he beats his wing!
I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,
When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,—
When he beats his bars and he would be free;
It is not a carol of joy or glee,
But a prayer that he sends from his heart's deep core,
But a plea that upward to Heaven he flings—
I know why the caged bird sings!Paul Laurence Dunbar
Tell me why the caged bird nutters against its prison bars, and I will tell you why the soul sickens of earthliness. The bird has wings, and wings were made to cleave the air, and soar in freedom in the sun. The soul is immortal — it cannot feed upon husks.
Randolph Sinks Foster
(Hezekiah) himself, like a caged bird, I shut up in Jerusalem, his royal city.
Sennacherib
The compelled mother loves her child as the caged bird sings. The song does not justify the cage nor the love the enforcement.
Germaine Greer
He bought a bird in its own cage, with a sheet over it so no one could see the bird and the bird couldn't see anyone, and the whole thing was a secret bird... Everything he said was tinged with the unreadability of someone who would bring a bird on cruise ship.
Daniel Handler
Soutar,William
Souter, Brian
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