Quotes about blackbird (21 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.”

Wallace Stevens book Harmonium

"Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird"
Harmonium (1923)

Beauty

“I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.”

Wallace Stevens book Harmonium

"Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird"
Harmonium (1923)

“O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?”

Wallace Stevens book Harmonium

"Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird"
Harmonium (1923)

Women , Men , Imagination , Bird

“It makes no difference abroad,
The seasons fit the same,
The mornings blossom into noons,
And split their pods of flame.

Wild-flowers kindle in the woods,
The brooks brag all the day;
No blackbird bates his jargoning
For passing Calvary.

Auto-da-fé and judgment
Are nothing to the bee;
His separation from his rose
To him seems misery.”

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) American poet

Nature, p. 120
Collected Poems (1993)

Flowers , Bee , Season

“Let merchants traverse seas and lands,
For silver mines and golden sands;
Whilst I beside some shadowy rill,
Just where its bubbling fountain swells,
Do sit and gather stones and shells,
And hear the tale the blackbird tells.”

Luis de Góngora (1561–1627) Spanish Baroque lyric poet

Busque muy en hora buena
el mercader nuevos soles;
yo conchas y caracoles
entre la menuda arena,
escuchando a Filomena
sobre el chopo de la fuente.
Letrillas, "Andeme yo caliente", line 24, cited from Robert Jammes (ed.) Letrillas (Madrid: Castalia, 1980) p. 116. Translation from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow The Poets and Poetry of Europe (New York: C. S. Francis, 1855) p. 695

Sea

“Morning has broken,
Like the first morning,
Blackbird has spoken
Like the first bird.
Praise for the singing!
Praise for the morning!
Praise for them springing
Fresh from the Word!”

Cat Stevens (1948) British singer-songwriter

Morning Has Broken, was widely popularized by the Cat Stevens version on Teaser and the Firecat (1971), but was actually written by Eleanor Farjeon in 1931. · A performance by Cat Stevens (1976) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5sSEkZ86ts
Misattributed

Spring , Bird , Singing

“Who knows who wrote that song of summer,
That blackbirds sing at dusk,
This is a song of colour,
Where sands sing in crimson, red and rust,
Then climb into bed and turn to dust.”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Song lyrics, Aerial (2005), A Sky of Honey (Disc 2)

Singing , Summer

“It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.”

Wallace Stevens book Harmonium

"Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird"
Harmonium (1923)

“Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.”

Wallace Stevens book Harmonium

"Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" - Full text online http://boppin.com/poets/stevens.htm
"The Blackbird Is Flying, The Children Must Be Writing" Sam Swope http://www.samswope.org/work2.htm (an essay on the use of this poem as a teaching tool).
Harmonium (1923)

Mountain

“Beside, 't is known he could speak Greek
As naturally as pigs squeak;
That Latin was no more difficile
Than to a blackbird 't is to whistle.”

Samuel Butler (poet) (1612–1680) poet and satirist

Canto I, line 51
Source: Hudibras, Part I (1663–1664)

Nature

“A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.”

Wallace Stevens book Harmonium

"Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird"
Harmonium (1923)

“Every morning during certain seasons of the year, the thrushes and blackbirds on all the lawns throughout the country draw out of their holes an astonishing number of worms; and this they could not do, unless they lay close to the surface.”

Charles Darwin book The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms

Source: The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms (1881), Chapter 1: Habits of Worms, p. 16. http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=31&itemID=F1357&viewtype=image

Drawing , Country , Season

“You disappoint me,all you people raking in on the world.The devil's script sellsyou the heart of a blackbird.”

Elliott Smith (1969–2003) American singer-songwriter

A Distorted Reality Is Now A Necessity To Be Free.
Lyrics, From a Basement on the Hill (posthumous, 2004)

People , Disappointment , Heart

“The blackbirds are in this book, they're both pro the kids and against the kids. Just like fate. Sometimes it goes your way. Sometimes… and also a blackbird is from my passion for Schubert songs and his blackbirds and his birds of doom or birds of good. … some people were baffled that in the last big picture of that book, there's a crucifix on the wall of the children's house. Everybody assumes the hero and heroine are Jewish and the mother is Jewish. They're not. They're not. — That was my point. Those kids were in the wrong place at the wrong time. And all children were in the Holocaust. Everybody was in the Holocaust. So, I made sure my hero and heroine were not Jewish children. That was too easy. That was too easy.”

Maurice Sendak (1928–2012) American illustrator and writer of children's books

NOW interview (2004)

Fate , Children , People , Books

“I question your innocence!
Help this blackbird!
She's a witch!
There's a stone around my leg.”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Song lyrics, Hounds of Love (1985), The Ninth Wave

Question , Help

“I value my garden more for being full of blackbirds than cherries, and very frankly give them fruit for their songs.”

Joseph Addison (1672–1719) politician, writer and playwright

No. 477 (6 September 1712).
The Spectator (1711–1714)

“What say you, good people?
"Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!"
Help this blackbird…”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Song lyrics, Hounds of Love (1985), The Ninth Wave

People , Help

“Morning has broken,
Like the first morning,
Blackbird has spoken
Like the first bird.”

Eleanor Farjeon (1881–1965) English children's writer

Morning Has Broken (1931)
Context: Morning has broken,
Like the first morning,
Blackbird has spoken
Like the first bird.
Praise for the singing!
Praise for the morning!
Praise for them springing
Fresh from the Word!

Bird

“Colonel Roosevelt liked the song of the blackbird so much that he was almost indignant that he had not heard more of its reputation before.”

Edward Grey, 1st Viscount Grey of Fallodon (1862–1933) British Liberal statesman

Recreation (1919)
Context: Colonel Roosevelt liked the song of the blackbird so much that he was almost indignant that he had not heard more of its reputation before. He said everybody talked about the song of the thrush; it had a great reputation, but the song of the blackbird, though less often mentioned, was much better than that of the thrush. He wanted to know the reason of this injustice and kept asking the question of himself and me. At last he suggested that the name of the bird must have injured its reputation. I suppose the real reason is that the thrush sings for a longer period of the year than the blackbird and is a more obtrusive singer, and that so few people have sufficient feeling about bird songs to care to discriminate.

“Morning has broken,
Like the first morning,
Blackbird has spoken
Like the first bird.
Praise for the singing!
Praise for the morning!
Praise for them springing
Fresh from the Word!”

Eleanor Farjeon (1881–1965) English children's writer

Morning Has Broken (1931)

Singing , Bird , Spring

“On the Death of Jim Larkin

Not with public words now can his greatness
Be told to the children, for he was more
Than a labour-agitating orator —
The flashing flaming sword merely bore witness
To the coming of the dawn. ‘Awake and look!
The flowers are growing for you, and wonderful trees,
And beyond are not the serf’s grey docks, but seas —
Excitement out of the creator’s poetry book.

When the Full Moon’s in the River the ghost of bread
Must not haunt all your weary wanderings home.
The ships that were dark galleys can become
Pine forests under the winter’s starry plough
And the brown gantries will be the lifted hand
Of man the dreamer whom the gods endow.’

And thus I hear Jim Larkin shout above
The crowd who wanted him to turn aside
From Reality coming to free them. Terrified
They hid in the clouds of dope and would not move.
They ate the opium of the murderer’s story
In the Sunday newspapers; they stood to stare
Not at a blackbird, but at a millionaire
Whose horses ran for serfdom’s greater glory.

And Tyranny trampled them in Dublin’s gutter,
Until Larkin came along and cried
The call of Freedom and the call of Pride,
And Slavery crept to its hands and knees,
And Nineteen Thirteen cheered from out the utter
Degradation of their miseries.”

Patrick Kavanagh (1904–1967) poet

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ND1NCf1ZRFM

Sea , Death , God , Children