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" Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird! / No hungry generations tread thee down /
The voice I hear this passing night was heard / In ancient days by emperor and clown "

 - Keats, Ode to a Nightingale

Birdy words for Valentine's Day

I noted on the BBC news web site that the nightingales of Britain, along with other woodland birds, have been in serious, continued decline. Indeed, the nightingale ranks as one of the fastest disappearing bird species in Europe, having decreased at an annual rate of 4 percent for 25 years.

It's not the only songbird celebrated by the British romantic poets that seems to be falling silent.

British breeding populations of skylarks, those modest, plump, plain-brown creatures with the heavenly voices, have decreased by more than 50 percent during the last 25-30 years, according to sharp-eyed observers at The British Trust for Ornithology.

Do kids today still have to memorize poetry? Probably not. I once had to memorize Percy Bysshe Shelley's "To a Skylark," and amazingly still remember the first few lines. ...

Hail to thee, blithe spirit -
Bird thou never wert -
That from heaven or near it
Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

I had forgotten, however, that many other great lines follow.

In the golden light'ning
Of the sunken sun,
O'er which clouds are bright'ning,
Thou dost float and run,
Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.

An unbodied joy. "With music sweet as love," Shelley writes in the poem, which he is supposed to have penned while traveling in Italy with his wife, Mary.

The skylark's lyrical voice reminds the poet of a crystal stream, of a spring rain shower ("vernal showers / On the twinkling grass ... All that ever was Joyous and clear and fresh / thy music doth surpass") and of a deflowered rose releasing a scent so sweet it makes him feel faint.

So it's a sad thought to think that this soaring, winged muse might fall silent without our noticing that it's flying away into the past, almost gone.

"Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought," is how Shelley put it in "To a Skylark."

Like a poet hidden
In the light of thought,
Singing hymns unbidden,
Till the world is wrought
To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not.

Copyright © 2009 Debba · Photos: Not an Audubon, but close, a Bien print. I've printed this detail of the Prairie Grouse wing upside down, as a symbol of distress.