Never Again Would Bird’s Song Be the Same
Never Again Would Bird’s Song Be the Same - fact Summary
In a Further Range
The poem imagines a woman whose daylong presence and tone subtly alters the birdsong of a garden until that influence becomes permanent. Frost presents this change as gentle but decisive: the birds adopt an "oversound" of her meaning without words, so that their song "never again" is the same. The final line frames her arrival as purposeful—she came to leave this mark. The poem is often read as reflecting the enduring, shaping effect of a significant woman in Frost’s life, likely his wife Elinor Miriam White.
Read Complete AnalysesHe would declare and could himself believe That the birds there in all the garden round From having heard the daylong voice of Eve Had added to their own an oversound, Her tone of meaning but without the words. Admittedly an eloquence so soft Could only have had an influence on birds When call or laughter carried it aloft. Be that as may be, she was in their song. Moreover her voice upon their voices crossed Had now persisted in the woods so long That probably it never would be lost. Never again would birds’ song be the same. And to do that to birds was why she came.
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