Birds of Passage by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
On a warm, starry night, a speaker hears unseen birds flying from snow and sleet toward southern fields. Their cries are then reimagined as poets' songs and the voices of souls seeking a warmer realm, whose rhymes reach a world of darkness.
By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · Genre: Lyric Poetry, Metapoetry · 313 words
First lines
Black shadows fall / From the lindens tall, / That lift aloft their massive wall / Against the southern sky;
And from the realms / Of the shadowy elms / A tide-like darkness overwhelms / The fields that round us lie.
Genres
- Lyric Poetry — The speaker's repeated declarations of hearing organize rhymed stanzas around a personal experience of nocturnal sounds.
- Metapoetry — The closing stanzas reinterpret birds' cries as the poet's songs, winged words, and the sound of rhyme.
Tags
bird migration · night · poetic voice · rhyme · southern flight
What this Textopian page supports
Birds of Passage is listed on Textopian as a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, dated Date unknown.
This source record anchors work identity, reading entry points, and catalog context for checking claims about the work.
- Work type: Poem
- Author: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
- Date: Date unknown
- Language: English
- Genres: Lyric Poetry, Metapoetry
- Length: 313 words
- Structure: 1 section, 10 paragraphs
- Reading fit: Fairly Easy (7th Grade)
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- Work identity for Birds of Passage by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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