Blackbirds Quotes

• I value my garden more for being full of blackbirds than of cherries, and very frankly give them fruit for their songs.

  Joseph Addison

  Song, Animal, Garden

  Joseph Addison, Sir Richard Steel (1810). “The Spectator”, p.20

  88 Copy quote

  Show source

• Morning has broken
  Like the first morning.
  Blackbird has spoken
  Like the first bird.

  Eleanor Farjeon

  Song, Morning, Broken

  "Morning Has Broken" (hymn) (1931)

  38 Copy quote

  Show source

• The song of thrush and blackbird, joy that falls so gently on the ears to celebrate another day of life and living, flying free.

  John McLeod

  Music, Song, Fall

  13 Copy quote

• I do not know which to prefer -
  The beauty of inflections
  Or the beauty of innuendoes,
  The blackbird whistling
  Or just after.

  Wallace Stevens

  Beauty, Music, Silence

  'Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird' (1923)

  35 Copy quote

  Show source

• Blackbirds are the cellos of the deep farms.

  Anne Stevenson

  Bird, Farms

  'Green Mountain, Black Mountain' (1982)

  35 Copy quote

  Show source

• O Blackbird! sing me something well: While all the neighbors shoot thee round, I keep smooth plats of fruitful ground, Where thou may'st warble, eat and dwell.

  Alfred Lord Tennyson

  May, Neighbor, Smooth

  Alfred Tennyson Tennyson, Baron, Alfred Lord Tennyson (2014). “Fifty Poems”, p.91, Cambridge University Press

  30 Copy quote

  Show source

• We are nature. We are nature seeing nature. The red-winged blackbird flies in us.

  Susan Griffin

  Healing, Red, Seeing

  Susan Griffin (1983). “Made from this earth: an anthology of writings”, HarperCollins Publishers

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• The river is moving. The blackbird must be flying.

  Wallace Stevens

  Moving, Rivers, Flying

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens”, p.94, Vintage

  23 Copy quote

  Show source

• And let them pass, as they will too soon,
  With the bean-flowers' boon,
  And the blackbird's tune,
  And May, and June!

  Robert Browning

  Summer, Flower, June

  Robert Browning, John Woolford, Daniel Karlin (1991). “The Poems of Browning: 1847-1861”, p.26, Pearson Education

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• How sweet the harmonies of the afternoon!
  The Blackbird sings along the sunny breeze
  His ancient song of leaves, and summer boon;
  Rich breath of hayfields streams thro' whispering trees;
  And birds of morning trim their bustling wings,
  And listen fondly--while the Blackbird sings.

  Frederick Tennyson

  Summer, Sweet, Song

  Frederick Tennyson (1854). “Days and Hours”, p.190

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• It was evening all afternoon.
  It was snowing
  And it was going to snow.
  The blackbird sat
  In the cedar-limbs.

  Wallace Stevens

  Winter, Snow, Cedars

  Wallace Stevens, John N. Serio, Robert Gantt Steele (2004). “Wallace Stevens”, p.16, Sterling Publishing Company, Inc.

  22 Copy quote

  Show source

• The nightingale has a lyre of gold, The lark's is a clarion call, And the blackbird plays but a boxwood flute, But I love him best of all. For his song is all the joy of life, And we in the mad spring weather, We two have listened till he sang Our hearts and lips together.

  William Ernest Henley

  Song, Spring, Heart

  William Ernest Henley (2016). “A Book of Verses”, Read Books Ltd

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• The devil's script sells you the heart of a blackbird.

  Elliott Smith

  Heart, Devil, Scripts

  Song: A Distorted Reality is Now a Necessity to be Free, Album: From a Basement on the Hill, 2004

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• Only nature has a right to grieve perpetually, for she only is innocent. Soon the ice will melt, and the blackbirds sing along the river which he frequented, as pleasantly as ever. The same everlasting serenity will appear in this face of God, and we will not be sorrowful, if he is not.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Love, Goodbye, Nature

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.1631, Delphi Classics

  20 Copy quote

  Show source
• 

  Take these broken wings and learn to fly.

  Paul McCartney

  Tattoo, Wings, Abbey Road

  Song: Blackbird

  38 Copy quote

  Show source

• I know noble accents And lucid, inescapable rhythms; But I know, too, That the blackbird is involved In what I know.

  Wallace Stevens

  Noble, Accents, Rhythm

  1923 Harmonium,'Thirteen Ways of Looking At A Blackbird', pt.8.

  19 Copy quote

  Show source

• As to the garden, it seems to me its chief fruit is-blackbirds.

  William Morris

  Garden, Fruit, Chiefs

  William Morris, May Morris (2012). “The Collected Works of William Morris: With Introductions by His Daughter May Morris”, p.21, Cambridge University Press

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Again the blackbirds sings; the streams Wake, laughing, from their winter dreams, And tremble in the April showers The tassels of the maple flowers.

  John Greenleaf Whittier

  Dream, Flower, Winter

  John Greenleaf Whittier (1857*). “Poems of John Greenleaf Whittier”, p.371

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• At the sight of blackbirds Flying in a green light, Even the bawds of euphony Would cry out sharply.

  Wallace Stevens

  Light, Sight, Bird

  Wallace Stevens, John N. Serio, Robert Gantt Steele (2004). “Wallace Stevens”, p.16, Sterling Publishing Company, Inc.

  20 Copy quote

  Show source

• In New England they once thought blackbirds useless, and mischievous to the corn. They made efforts to destroy them. The consequence was, the blackbirds were diminished; but a kind of worm, which devoured their grass, and which the blackbirds used to feed on, increased prodigiously; then, finding their loss in grass much greater than their saving in corn, they wished again for their blackbirds.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Loss, Effort, Useless

  Benjamin Franklin, Walter Isaacson (2003). “A Benjamin Franklin Reader”, p.156, Simon and Schuster

  3 Copy quote

  Show source

• O'er hill and field October's glories fade;
  O'er hill and field the blackbirds southward fly;
  The brown leaves rustle down the forest glade,
  Where naked branches make a fitful shade,
  And the lost blooms of Autumn withered lie.

  George Arnold

  Lying, Autumn, Branches

  George Arnold, “October”

  15 Copy quote

  Show source

• We waste days like mad blackbirds and pray for alcoholic nightsour silk-sick human smiles wrap around us like somebody else's confetti

  Charles Bukowski

  Mad, Sick, Bird

  Charles Bukowski (2012). “The Pleasures of the Damned: Selected Poems 1951-1993”, p.235, Canongate Books

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• The bowed head, the buried face. She is silent, she will never speak, never forgive, never reach a hand, never leave this frozen present tense. All waits, suspended. Suspended the autumn trees, the autumn sky, anonymous people. A blackbird, poor fool, sings out of season from the willows by the lake. A flight of pigeons over the houses; fragments of freedom, hazard, an anagram made flesh. And somewhere the stinging smell of burning leaves.

  John Fowles

  Autumn, Smell, Lakes

  13 Copy quote

• In spring more mortal singers than belong
  To any one place cover us with song.
  Thrush, bluebird, blackbird, sparrow, and robin throng.

  Robert Frost

  Song, Spring, Robins

  Robert Frost (1975). “The poetry of Robert Frost”

  3 Copy quote

  Show source

• A springful of larks in a rolling Cloud and the roadside bushes brimming with whistling Blackbirds and the sun of October Summery On the hill's shoulder.

  Dylan Thomas

  Nature, Clouds, October

  Dylan Thomas, Daniel Jones (2003). “The Poems of Dylan Thomas”, p.205, New Directions Publishing

  4 Copy quote

  Show source