NEVER AGAIN WOULD BIRDSONG BE THE SAME.

A poem by Robert Frost.

Robert Frost was born in San Francisco in 1874. By 1913 he had published his first book, and by 1924 had the first of his four Pulitzer Prizes under his belt. Other horrible things happened to him as well. In 1934 his youngest child died. Four years later his wife, Elinor died. Then, appallingly, his son Carol died in 1940. As if this wasn’t enough, as if the Gods had not visited enough horror on the poor man, the Fates gave him a daughter with mental illness. How the hell he survived all this is absolutely beyond me.

In Frost’s late 60s, in 1942, he produced a body of work entitled ‘A Witness Tree’ The book took its name from the following poem;

A WITNESS TREE.

He would declare and could himself believe

That the birds there in 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 birdsong be the same.

And to do that to birds is why she came.

END.

You cannot be academic or indeed dispassionate in the face of this. Here’s Frost,  a short time later, remembering his family’s brief time on earth. He is remembering how vital, how lifegiving, how indeed transforming their contribution to his life had been, and how diminished he is now by their loss. He knows now too well the emptiness that goes hand-in-hand with the knowledge that once he had a  Paradise of his own in his grasp.

More than this, and this is a stunning compliment, the poet believes that birdsong itself  has been  altered and noticeably enriched simply by coming in contact with the subtlety, compassion and love that the poet had experienced in Elinor’s ‘…call or laughter…’

Bereft and wretched, he  consoles himself with the notion that;

‘…Never again would birdsong be the same

And to do that to birds is why she came…’

There are two things being said here at once. First the poet sees his wife almost as a  messenger from the Gods who, having performed a sacred duty,  ‘…to do that to birds is why she came…’ must return to Paradise. The second, heartbreakingly, is that, to the poet, without his wife and children, ‘…never again would birdsong be the same…’. He is robbed of the capacity, perhaps even stops listening to, that magical life of the woods they had so revelled in when she was alive.Without her, Eden is now denied him.

This is devastating, close-to-the-bone poetry written by a man with all of his doubts, frailties and sense of loss on display. I believe the mention of ‘Eve’ is a literary conceit intended to convey the notion of the ‘First Woman’ in the sense that he saw his wife Elinor in that light and himself perhaps, for the sake of the poem,  as Adam.

This is a first-class piece of work. If anyone cares to disagree with my assessment then I suggest that a meeting behind the cathedral at dawn  might resolve the matter.

 Ira Maine Esq, Poetry Editor