In modern poetry, birds have been just as visible – and not simply as ornament. Ted Hughes found in birds the symbols of his own concerns, first in the shining, terrible, power of The Hawk in the Rain whose "wings hold all creation in a weightless quiet" and later going as far as to forge his own gospel story in Crow. In ‘The Nightingale,’ Sir Philip Sidney describes a nightingale and her song. He makes the traditional allusion to Philomela, and tries to offer the bird some “gladness.” He spends the other lines alluding to the story at the heart of nightingale myth and speaking on mortality and immortality. Fariduddin Attar in Great Poets of Classical Persian" by R M Chopra, 2014, Sparrow Publication, Kolkata, ISBN 978-81-89140-75-5.

Poems about birds are incredibly popular in the history of verse writing. They explore birds’ qualities and their symbolic power. For more classic poetry, we recommend The Oxford Book of English Verse – perhaps the best poetry anthology on the market. Continue to explore the world of poetry with our tips for the close reading of poetry, these must-have poetry anthologies, and these classic poems about horses. Scene from The Conference of the Birds in a Persian miniature. The hoopoe, center right, instructs the other birds on the Sufi path. The dove is the central figure in the poem and represents all birds kept in captivity against their natural inclinations. The poet's empathy for the captive bird highlights the universal human desire to see birds fly free and unfettered. Birds serve as the central figures of the poem. They each embody a different emotional state. Sparrows and robins are commonly found birds, making them relatable subjects. By elevating these everyday creatures to the level of poetic exploration, Blake underscores their significance.

The Official Website

First full-length study of birds and their metamorphoses as treated in a wide range of medieval poetry, from the Anglo-Saxons to Chaucer and Gower. Evening Hawk' is, of course, centered on a bird, although it becomes a wider symbol over the course of the poem. Its wings, in particular, are representative of time's progress.

The Yellowhammer’s Nest’ describes the beautiful and brutal world in which the yellowhammer lives. The speaker asks his listeners to draw close to a stream and look at a nest nestled there. It contains beautiful eggs with “scribbled” lines on them. He goes on to speak about the beauty of the world of birds and how many things can interrupt it. Warren's handling of medieval material in a way that reminds us of both the innate value of the species we run the risk of destroying and the dangers of human exceptionalism is a welcome and, moreover, a significant contribution to the field."If poems are like birds' nests, shelters from the storm pieced together from odds and ends, what is a poetry anthology but a nest of nests? Poets have ­always been birdwatchers, to varying degrees of expertness: Coleridge's nightingale, in Lyrical Ballads, is the first record of that species in Somerset, and John Clare provided 65 first descriptions of the birds of Northamptonshire. A contemporary twitcher-poet such as Peter Reading frequently apostrophises his Zeiss binoculars, and Helen Macdonald is an avian researcher and falconer.

Valley of Detachment, where all desires and attachments to the world are given up. Here, what is assumed to be “reality” vanishes. Birds are a very key image of this beautiful poem. Throughout, Clare mentions several species of birds, many of which he names using specific British terms that are likely to be unusual or unknown to readers from other countries. Birds hold a special place in Kendall's poem, symbolizing freedom and the inherent connection between humans and the natural world. In 'Bell Birds,' the birds are a very important part of the piece and their melodic songs representing the harmonious relationship between nature and humanity. The author of this article, Dr Oliver Tearle, is a literary critic and lecturer in English at Loughborough University. He is the author of, among others, The Secret Library: A Book-Lovers’ Journey Through Curiosities of History and The Great War, The Waste Land and the Modernist Long Poem.

Metaphors, Realities, Transformations

The poem 'I Ate Too Much Turkey' humorously references birds, particularly the titular turkey. It playfully highlights the excesses of a Thanksgiving feast where turkey is a centerpiece. The poem doesn't delve deeply into the topic of birds but uses them as symbols of indulgence, contributing to the lighthearted and comical theme of overeating during the holiday celebration. Attar, Conference of the Birds, translated by Sholeh Wolpé, W. W. Norton & Co 2017, ISBN 0393292193 So begins this brilliant take on the sonnet. Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-89) thought ‘The Windhover’ the best thing he ever wrote. He wrote it in 1877, during a golden era of creativity for the poet, while he was living in Wales. The comparison between the kestrel or ‘windhover’ and Christ arises out of Hopkins’s deeply felt Christianity (he was a Jesuit), and the poet’s breathless exhilaration at sighting the bird is brilliantly captured by Hopkins’s distinctive ‘sprung rhythm’. The birds feature as an important symbol in the poem, with different ones representing the different stages of human life.