Poem & Analysis of 'The Death of the Bird' by A.D Hope



POEM

The Death of the Bird
Alec Derwent Hope (21 July 1907 – 13 July 2000)

For every bird there is this last migration:
Once more the cooling year kindles her heart;
With a warm passage to the summer station
Love pricks the course in lights across the chart.

Year after year a speck on the map, divided
By a whole hemisphere, summons her to come;
Season after season, sure and safely guided,
Going away she is also coming home.

And being home, memory becomes a passion
With which she feeds her brood and straws her nest,
Aware of ghosts that haunt the heart’s possession
And exiled love mourning within the breast.

The sands are green with a mirage of valleys;
The palm-tree casts a shadow not its own;
Down the long architrave of temple or palace
Blows a cool air from moorland scarps of stone.

And day by day the whisper of love grows stronger;
That delicate voice, more urgent with despair,
Custom and fear constraining her no longer,
Drives her at last on the waste leagues of air.

A vanishing speck in those inane dominions,
Single and frail, uncertain of her place,
Alone in the bright host of her companions,
Lost in the blue unfriendliness of space,

She feels it close now, the appointed season:
The invisible thread is broken as she flies;
Suddenly, without warning, without reason,
The guiding spark of instinct winks and dies.

Try as she will, the trackless world delivers
No way, the wilderness of light no sign,
The immense and complex map of hills and rivers
Mocks her small wisdom with its vast design.

And darkness rises from the eastern valleys,
And the winds buffet her with their hungry breath,
And the great earth, with neither grief nor malice,
Receives the tiny burden of her death.


ANALYSIS

THE LAST MIGRATION IN DEATH OF THE BIRD

   A.D Hope is one of Australia’s leading poets. He is best known for his elegies and satires. He deals with recurrent themes in his poetry with honesty, persistence and a sense of commitment.

   Death of a Bird is one of the greatest poems of the 20thcentury.It is also considered as a master piece not only of Australian literature but also of English literature. It is an elegy with extraordinary pathos.

   The poet does not attempt to portray the bird neither as a romantic symbol nor a modernist anti symbol but as an alien. The poem deals with a migratory bird and its journey towards its destiny which is unable to foresee the obstacles on its journey. The innocent bird meets its tragic end. The earth receives the death of his tiny burden with neither grief nor malice. The bird becomes a victim for man’s insensibility towards the bird.

   The first line signals the theme of the poem.  “For every bird this is the last migration”. The line tells us that this bird ready to escape from the responsibility of her life. She fights up to her death during her life time. She faces many obstacles; she faces all those obstacles with good spirit.

   The bulk of the poem introduces us to the inner life of the bird. Memories, sensations and longing that she has experienced in the process of migration. Season after season she migrates to different places. For her going away is also a way of coming home.  At home memory becomes a passion. She feeds her brood and builds her nest.

   The poet uses phrases like “day to day”, “Season after Season” and “year after year” to indicate the intensity of memory. The bird is constantly haunted by memory and struggles against loneliness. “Single and frail uncertain of her place/ Alone in the bright host her companions /Lost in the blue unfriendliness of space”.

   The bird is alone and she feels that death is near. As she flies the invisible thread is broken. To the bird the immense and complex map of hills and rivers seems to mock at her small wisdom with its vast design.

   The last line of the poem summons up the poet’s view of bird’s life in remorseless nature. The passing away of a bird is received without grief or malice, but simply as another event of death that occurs every day. However, the poet gives great dignity to the existence of the bird. He presents the birds life with tenderness.

   The poem is about death which has a very dark tone which addresses how everyone is going to die. The poet uses the migration of the bird as an overarching metaphor to indicate the final migration of life,that is death.


Pooja T.P
3rd Yr. B.A. (HEE)
Sahyadri Arts College
Shivamogga

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