THE DEATH OF THE BIRD

A D Hopes The Death of the Bird has been often analysed and analysed well
over the years since it was first published in 1948. A good treatment of the
poem can be found at where it is described as one of the greatest lyric poems
in English of the tewentieth century.
This blog also gives a good description of the style, genre and atmosphere of
the poem, making an interesting point, for instance, about the use of feminine
and masculine rhymes, alternately, throughout the poem. Briefly,
migration/station makes a feminine rhyme, heart/chart a masculine one. This
creates a musical phrase that remains consistent and reliable throughout.
If you remember that rhyme is a component of rhythm, you will understand
how rhyme can be an essential element of the music of a poem.
As far as the mood goes, I have always felt that the mix of romantic feeling
and classical restraint is weighted towards the latter, which arguably prevents
the over-sentimentalising of the story of this bird and this death. Because it is
so measured, structurally and emotionally, its very calmness becomes a sort of
contrast to the facts it describes.
This is classical and definitely not confessional or dealing directly with
personal emotions, unlike poets contemporary to Hope, poets like Robert
Lowell and Sylvia Plath.
The above-mentioned blog is a good study, but there are a few additional
points I could make, starting with some comments on theme.
The first verses make me think of the whole ethos of estrangement that was a
feature of Australian society, at least of a certain kind, right up to and through
the 20th century. It probably still exists, in sheltered drawing rooms where
dowagers speak of England as home. They live in this country as exiles. At
best they love this country, but they also love the mother country and it
draws them back, often actually.
This is to be found in the 2nd and 3rd verses: with Going away she is also
coming home and Aware of ghosts that haunt the hearts possession. The
first would apply directly to that feeling of being estranged from the mother
country, the ghosts of the second being the ancestors, the family history that
grew in another country and culture the exiled love.
It seems to me that Hope, while writing about a bird and its entirely natural
annual migrations, would have to have been aware of the underlying shade of

a meaning to do with people, the whole sense of going home when home has
now become a different place. Nevertheless, unlike well-known bird poems
like Yeats Wild Swans at Coole, and Keats Ode to a Nightingale, this poem is
not about the poets feelings, nor does it overtly draw parallels with humanity
or history.
The fourth verse has always given me difficulty. It seems to intrude, though it
can be logically explained. It is a fine description of an exotic scene and fits the
theme of the bird being subject to the lure of faraway places, but is it
specifically the faraway place
from which the whisper of love emanates, or is it just scenery on the way?
Ive always seen it that way, like being in a plane and looking down as I
remember vividly when I first flew over the Alps.
Interestingly, this verse is the only one in the poem which is not specifically
about the bird.
Now we go back to the bird, which has not yet set out on its migratory flight
and to the poets version of what drives her to undertaking that long and
difficult journey. Here we have the first clear hint of danger, of this flight
being special and onerous in drives her and the waste leagues.
A wasteland is a far cry from the warm passage to the summer station.
There had been the promise of being sure and safely guided, now the bird
is a vanishing speck and the dominions are inane. Instead of the course
being marked out by love, now it is unfriendliness that she encounters a
hint of forces being arrayed against her.
At this stage, I can see no sign of that colonial displacement I detected earlier
the analogy no longer holds. Now were concentrated by the poet entirely on
the small (helpless) bird in vast space, estranged from any companions and
any help, heading to her death, about which there can be no suspense see the
title and first verse.
By now the appointed season is not the season for migration, it is the season
of death. The course previously pricked out by love has disintegrated, the sky
is trackless, the land below, once alluring and exotic, is now immense and
mocking and what a splendid image that is: The immense and complex
map of hills and rivers/Mocks her small wisdom with its vast design.
Nature has become, arguably, an active enemy of the tiny bird, although the
justly famous ending restores Nature to its passive and even gentle self.