Ovenbird in Literature

The Oven Bird

Poem by Robert Frost

• There is a singer everyone has heard,
• Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird,
• Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again.
• He says that leaves are old and that for flowers
• Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten.
• He says the early petal-fall is past
• When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers
• On sunny days a moment overcast;
• And comes that other fall we name the fall.
• He says the highway dust is over all.
• The bird would cease and be as other birds
• But that he knows in singing not to sing.
• The question that he frames in all but words
• Is what to make of a diminished thing.