“Hard TimesMusic is silenced, the dark descending slowlyHas stripped unending skies of all companions.Weariness grips your limbs and within the locked horizonsDumbly ring the bells of hugely gathering fears.Still, O bird, O sightless bird,Not yet, not yet the time to furl your wings.It's not melodious woodlands but the leaps and fallsOf an ocean's drowsy booming,Not a grove bedecked with flowers but a tumult flecked with foam.Where is the shore that stored your buds and leaves?Where the nest and the branch's hold?Still, O bird, my sightless bird,Not yet, not yet the time to furl your wings.Stretching in front of you the night's immensityHides the western hill where sleeps the distant sun;Still with bated breath the world is counting time and swimmingAcross the shoreless dark a crescent moonHas thinly just appeared upon the dim horizon.-But O my bird, O sightless bird,Not yet, not yet the time to furl your wings.From upper skies the stars with pointing fingersIntently watch your course and death's impatienceLashes at you from the deeps in swirling waves;And sad entreaties line the farthest shoreWith hands outstretched and crooning 'Come, O come!'Still, O bird, O sightless bird,Not yet, not yet the time to furl your wings.All that is past: your fears and loves and hopes;All that is lost: your words and lamentation;No longer yours a home nor a bed composed of flowers.For wings are all you have, and the sky's broadening countryard,And the dawn steeped in darkness, lacking all direction.Dear bird, my sightless bird,Not yet, not yet the time to furl your wings!”

“Pass not beneath, O Caravan, or pass not singing. Have you heardThat silence where the birds are dead yet something pipeth like a bird?”

“It is winter time! Feed the birds! Teach your children to feed the birds! Request your neighbour to feed the birds! Encourage your friends to feed the birds!”

“O SWEET everlasting Voices, be still;Go to the guards of the heavenly foldAnd bid them wander obeying your will,Flame under flame, till Time be no more;Have you not heard that our hearts are old,That you call in birds, in wind on the hill,In shaken boughs, in tide on the shore?O sweet everlasting Voices, be still. ”

“THE TAME BIRD WAS IN A CAGETHE tame bird was in a cage, the free bird was in the forest.They met when the time came, it was a decree of fate.The free bird cries, "O my love, let us fly to the wood."The cage bird whispers, "Come hither, let us both live in the cage."Says the free bird, "Among bars, where is there room to spread one's wings?""Alas," cries the caged bird, "I should not know where to sit perched in the sky." The free bird cries, "My darling, sing the songs of the woodlands."The cage bird sings, "Sit by my side, I'll teach you the speech of the learned."The forest bird cries, "No, ah no! songs can never be taught."The cage bird says, "Alas for me, I know not the songs of the woodlands." There love is intense with longing, but they never can fly wing to wing.Through the bars of the cage they look, and vain is their wish to know each other.They flutter their wings in yearning, and sing, "Come closer, my love!"The free bird cries, "It cannot be, I fear the closed doors of the cage."The cage bird whispers, "Alas, my wings are powerless and dead.”

“For the birds there is not a time that they tell, but the point vierge between darkness and light, between being and nonbeing. You can tell yourself the time by their waking, if you are experienced. But that is your folly, not theirs.”