Though blackbird’s song is hushed, his eye’s still bright,
Searching through dead leaves while lasts the light,
The wind blows brusque and sharper every day,
No ruffled feathers keep the cold away.
Ripe fruit falls and bruises on the ground,
Too late for wasps, leaf fall the only sound.
From summer-weary birch tree boughs I hear
The robin’s song of notes, as sharp and clear
As icy water trickling in a rill,
As starlight glittering on a snowy hill,
Reminding me, sure as night fades at dawn,
That this sweet summer too is almost gone.
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Reblogged this on O LADO ESCURO DA LUA.
Thank you for reblogging 🙂
I love this, Jane. The blackbird (of course!) and his still-bright eye, and the chilly mind’s-eye visions of the second stanza.
I wrote the second stanza first and decided it wasn’t quite long enough for a ‘real’ poem. And I had to get the blackbird in somewhere 🙂
This is outstanding. The picture is perfect. As if the painting were painted for the poem and the poem penned for the painting.
The light is lovely in this painting, a real end of summer light. I’m glad you liked the match.
You did them proud you really did. Both exquisite and with each other only more so.
Thank you! The robins have just started to take over the world again. Suddenly they are everywhere!
Terribly envious as we have NONE that I can see here! (I am told there are TX Robins but am yet to verify this) there are red cardinals they are beautiful and hummingbirds and others, especially the hawks incredible, but nothing beats the appeal of a fat robin it’s impossible and heralds a lovely season too
American robins a are part of the thrush family, so nothing like the European robin which, being European, you don’t get. There are limits to what the US can have after all 🙂
grrr imposters! 😉
If they’re thrushes they must have a pretty song too 🙂
There’s a bird here called a Grackle? And it makes a VERY odd winding-up sound that is totally alien. Love it. Scared of it!
What a tremendous name! Like the cormorant in Noggin the Nog, called Graculus.
ha! Cormorant is a great one definitely but never heard of Graculus! Wow!
Don’t you know Noggin the Nog!!!! One of the iconic children’s programmes from the sixties probably. It ran and ran and ran. The narrator, Oliver Postgate had the most wonderful voice ever
They look so ancient today but it’s the kind of stuff the pre-schools were watching in the UK. Like Game of Thrones without the sex.
You know now that you mention it I HAVE heard of it but I had not moved to the UK during those years so I didn’t know it in France (there may have been a translated version there were a lot of them) but I am going to check it out! 🙂 I like ancient, the one I do know is Button Moon and one about a ginger cat that was a cloth cat?
I remember the cat one, but forget the name. Noggin the Nog went on for decades. I don’t remember the very early ones. They got slightly more sophisticated but kept the very unanimated idea. They even ended up in colour by the 1990s.
Bagpuss! oh and Mr Ben?
Bag Puss! I was thinking Bag Cat, but that’s it. And Mr Ben which I never watched but had friends who did. There’s a lot of TV I missed, must have been on the other channel 🙂
Mr Ben was great. Bagpuss was lovely. I think the English get it really right with that tenor
British TV was great while it was producing its own material. I think they have their fair share of reality shows now.