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Ruth Pitter

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The Other

Like a bird in the rainy cover
When song has fallen still,
It dwells apart, and over
Blue hill upon blue hill:

As a bird in the green places,
When summer days are long,
Falls weary, and embraces
Silence instead of song;

Far and apart it muses
In the obscure and dim,
Forgetting the sweet uses
Of voice and feather and limb.

Small, small and slender,
Crowned with its faint gold crown,
It dwells where the light is tender,
Like fair hair falling down.

Swiftness and song were moulded
Into that wing, that breast;
But the bright wing is folded,
The throbbing throat at rest.

When from that bosom narrow
The fiery singing flew,
Like a sharp secret arrow
It pierced my armour through;

But its great silence haunts me
In the solemn summer gloom;
The voiceless thing enchants me
As with a sense of doom.

A monument, a token
Of all we have betrayed;
Of all the brightness broken—
It makes my soul afraid.

Far from the tumult fleeing,
Where we ourselves destroy,
Is it my own grieved being,
Mourning its unborn joy,

Or some indignant spirit,
Whose power can afford
To give us what we merit—
A silence like a sword?

Page(s) 131-132

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