Far away in the woods, sits a bird on a maple tree.

She perches there mute in weather inclement or sultry,

And one would pass her and never realise

That she is there, for she does not vocalise.

From her throat escapes no chirp, no whistle, no trill,

No one knows whether her pitch is deep or shrill,

She lives alone, silently observing,

Alas for the bird who does not sing!

Her voice is splendid, fine is her beak,

Then pray why does she not speak?

Is it because she has nothing to narrate,

No fancies in her heart, no unlikely tale of fate?

No- she is quiet, for although through much she has been,

Much she has felt and much she has seen,

Unbeknownst to her is the art of expressing,

Alas for the bird who does not sing!

'Tis not that she doesn't wish to express,

But that it feels so much more natural to repress

Her thoughts than to let them be known,

For they concern no self but her own,

Although it would disencumber her heart,

Her sorrows, she can, to none impart,

And so, in them, she is quietly wallowing,

Alas for the bird who does not sing!

Thinking that others have their business to go about

Why should anyone stop to hear her out?

So, she keeps mum her dulcet tones,

The thought of articulation chills her bones,

For if she sings, it is her fear,

Everyone else would only sneer,

So she goes, herself deluding,

Alas for the bird who does not sing!

Many years she had passed thus,

When one wintry day it all felt too much

To hold inside; so finally she yielded,

And to the ground, that bird dropped dead.

Her life of silence had not given her peace, oh,

But at last peace was hers, in her coffin of snow,

She died as tacitly as she had been living,

Alas for the bird who did not sing!

But her life had not gone quite unnoticed,

For there was someone by whom she was missed

At springtide a poet used to come,

And his muse that bird had become,

The next spring he came again, but her of course he could not find,

Time may have now forgotten her, but she dwells yet fresh in his mind.

He wishes only to hear her once, and still looks for her every spring,

Alas for the poet who did not hear the bird sing!