“How can a bird that is born for joy
Sit in a cage and sing?”

— William Blake

Last update April 18, 2025. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "How can a bird that is born for joy Sit in a cage and sing?" by William Blake?

William Blake 249

English Romantic poet and artist 1757–1827

Related quotes

“How can the bird that is born for joy
Sit in a cage and sing?
How can a child, when fears annoy,
But droop his tender wing,
And forget his youthful spring?”

William Blake Songs of Innocence and of Experience

Source: Songs of Innocence and of Experience

“The caged bird sings with a fearful trill,
of things unknown, but longed for still,
and his tune is heard on the distant hill,
for the caged bird sings of freedom.”

Maya Angelou book I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Source: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

“Birds born in a cage think flying is an illness.”

Alejandro Jodorowsky (1929) Filmmaker and comics writer

As quoted in Investing with Impact: Why Finance is a Force for Good (2016) by Jeremy Balkin

“The compelled mother loves her child as the caged bird sings. The song does not justify the cage nor the love the enforcement.”

Germaine Greer (1939) Australian feminist author

Article "Abortion", The Sunday Times, 21 May 1972

“I know what the caged bird feels, alas!
When the sun is bright on the upland slopes;
When the wind blows soft through the springing grass,
And the river floats like a stream of glass;
When the first bird sings and the first bud opes,
And the faint perfume from its chalice steals—
I know what the caged bird feels!

I know why the caged bird beats his wing
Till its blood is red on the cruel bars;
For he must fly back to his perch and cling
When he fain would be on the bough a-swing;
And a pain still throbs in the old, old scars
And they pulse again with a keener sting—
I know why he beats his wing!

I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,
When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,—
When he beats his bars and he would be free;
It is not a carol of joy or glee,
But a prayer that he sends from his heart's deep core,
But a plea that upward to Heaven he flings—
I know why the caged bird sings!”

Paul Laurence Dunbar Sympathy

Sympathy, in the 1913 collection of his work, The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar; the poem inspired the title of Maya Angelou's book, Why the Caged Bird Sings.

“What is this thing called the existence? Is it all the things that we perceive it to be? Or is it something else? It's a gift. One of my favorite examples is the bird in the cage. You may think that you own the bird inside the cage, but you're wrong. You only own the cage. People think that they need to have a very fancy cage, that the more incredible the cage, the more incredible the bird will look. But the cage and the bird are really two different things. When the bird is gone, all that will be left is the cage.”

Prem Rawat (1957) controversial spiritual leader

Kaohsiung, Taiwan, April 6, 1991
1990s

“I think my great book is Born to Sing: An Interpretation and World Survey of Bird Song.”

Charles Hartshorne (1897–2000) Philosopher

In Herbert F. Vetter, " Not The Average Philosopher http://www.harvardsquarelibrary.org/unitarians/hartshorne.html", Harvard Magazine, May/June 1997, Volume 99, Number 5. Vetter was surprised by this, given Hartshorne's dozens of substantial books on theology.