Looking for a Sunset Bird in Winter
Looking for a Sunset Bird in Winter - meaning Summary
Expectation Meets Winter Absence
The poem records a brief, winter evening encounter that begins with the speaker mistaking a small, bright movement for a bird. Memory of a summer when the same tree hosted a singing bird contrasts sharply with the present scene: barren branches, a single leaf, and icy stillness. The speaker imagines how cold embellishes the landscape yet also erases familiar vitality. The final image—thin cloud or smoke and a small star—emphasizes the poem’s quiet sense of loss and the fragile persistence of perception amid seasonal absence.
Read Complete AnalysesThe west was getting out of gold, The breath of air had died of cold, When shoeing home across the white, I thought I saw a bird alight. In summer when I passed the place I had to stop and lift my face; A bird with an angelic gift Was singing in it sweet and swift. No bird was singing in it now. A single leaf was on a bough, And that was all there was to see In going twice around the tree. From my advantage on a hill I judged that such a crystal chill Was only adding frost to snow As gilt to gold that wouldn’t show. A brush had left a crooked stroke Of what was either cloud or smoke From north to south across the blue; A piercing little star was through.
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