Extinct Birds
Extinct Birds - meaning Summary
Extinction, Memory, Poetic Survival
Wright's poem recalls Charles Harpur's notebook records of forest birds now gone. It contrasts the vivid lives of vanished species and the fallen forest with the muted survival of their descriptions on unread pages. The poem raises a double irony: the poet who helped fell the forest is both complicit in extinction and, through love and careful record, preserved those birds' memory. It ends by asking whether poetic preservation amounts to a form of immortality.
Read Complete AnalysesCharles Harpur in his journals long ago (written in hope and love, and never printed) recorded the birds of his time’s forest — birds long vanished with the fallen forest — described in copperplate on unread pages. The scarlet satin-bird, swung like a lamp in berries, he watched in love, and then in hope described it, There was a bird, blue, small, spangled like dew. All now are vanished with the fallen forest. And he, unloved, past hope, was buried, who helped with proud stained hands to fell the forest, and set those birds in love on unread pages; yet thought himself immortal, being a poet. And is he not immortal, where I found him, in love and hope along his careful pages? — the poet vanished, in the vanished forest, among his brightly tincted extinct birds?
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