A solitary listener recalls a bird whose three-note call he heard alone in a beech wood one spring several years ago. Despite many people listening, not a single other person ever caught the sound—not friends, not naturalists. The simple "La-la-la!" seemed to come from impossibly far away, as if from beyond the edge of the real world, half dreamlike, and it filled him with a mingled sadness and joy, both too distant to be fully tasted. The bird itself remained unseen, its song existing only in his memory, yet he treasures it more than any ordinary sound. Now, when he thinks of it, the memory has kept its power, lifting him: he feels light as that wandering bird beyond the shore. The mood is intimate and ghostly, full of longing for a beauty just out of reach.
The Unknown Bird — Summary
THREE lovely notes he whistled, too soft to be heard If others sang; but others never sang In the great beech-wood all that May and June. No one saw him: I alone could hear him Though many listened. Was it but four years Ago? or five? He never came again.
Oftenest when I heard him I was alone, Nor could I ever make another hear. La-la-la! he called, seeming far-off-- As if a cock crowed past the edge of the world, As if the bird or I were in a dream. Yet that he travelled through the trees and some- times Neared me, was plain, though somehow distant still He sounded. All the proof is--I told men What I had heard.
I never knew a voice,
Man, beast, or bird, better than this. I told The naturalists; but neither had they heard Anything like the notes that did so haunt me, I had them clear by heart and have them still. Four years, or five, have made no difference. Then As now that La-la-la! was bodiless sweet: Sad more than joyful it was, if I must say That it was one or other, but if sad 'Twas sad only with joy too, too far off For me to taste it. But I cannot tell If truly never anything but fair The days were when he sang, as now they seem. This surely I know, that I who listened then, Happy sometimes, sometimes suffering A heavy body and a heavy heart, Now straightway, if I think of it, become Light as that bird wandering beyond my shore.