The Oven Bird
The Oven Bird - context Summary
Published 1916 in Mountain Interval
Published in 1916 in the collection Mountain Interval, Robert Frost’s "The Oven Bird" uses a familiar woodland singer to frame reflections on seasonal and human decline. Frost wrote from close observation of nature; the poem stages a mid-summer bird noting that the peak of flowering is past and asking, without direct language, "what to make of a diminished thing." Its placement in Mountain Interval aligns with Frost’s broader preoccupation with change, loss, and the moral questions those prompt.
Read Complete AnalysesThere is a singer eveyone has heard, Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird, Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again. He says that leaves are old and that for flowers Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten. He says the early petal-fall is past, When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers On sunny days a moment overcast; And comes that other fall we name the fall. He says the highway dust is over all. The bird would cease and be as other birds But that he knows in singing not to sing. The question that he frames in all but words Is what to make of a diminished thing.
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