The Singer
The Singer - meaning Summary
A Lament in Three Questions
The poem asks the reader if they witnessed a young bard singing alone in the grove and woods, offering simple pastoral details—pipe music, tears, a pale face—and evoking his persistent sorrow. Through three repeated questions the speaker stages communal witnessing and prompts sympathy. The focus is emotional rather than narrative: it memorializes the singer’s grief and solitude, leaving causes unexplained while insisting on the power of shared attention to loss.
Read Complete AnalysesDid you attend? He sang by grove ripe - The bard of love, the singer of his mourning. When fields were silent by the early morning, To sad and simple sounds of a pipe Did you attend? Did you behold in dark of forest leaf The bard of love, the singer of his sadness? The trace of tears, the smile, the utter paleness, The quiet look, full of eternal grief, Did you behold? Then did you sigh when hearing how cries The bard of love, the singer of his dole? When in the woods you saw the young man, sole, And met the look of his extinguished eyes, Then did you sigh? Translated by Yevgeny Bonver
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