* * *
Little pretty bird, Ring not your song Like pebbles down The well of the heart.
The nightingale and swan
Are singers both.
Sorrow and death inspire their art But not for long, But not for long.
For many years I did not know where the image of the bird and the well came from. Then I saw a re-issue of Walt Disney's "Snow Wife and the Seven Dwarfs" and it was obviously a memory of the wishing well scene. My parents took me to see it when I was three and it made a huge impression on me. I still think it is a masterpiece and a triumph of that cooperative art which was so typical of the time. Images from it crop up in other poems too.
Peter John Dean
SourceLicence:CC BY-ND 3.0