Poem by Robert Lee Frost

On a Bird Singing in Its Sleep

A bird half wakened in the lunar noon 
Sang half way through its little inborn tune. 
Partly because it sang but once all night 
And that from no especial bush's height; 
Partly because it sang ventriloquist 
And had the inspiration to desist 
Almost before the prick of hostile ears, 
It ventured less in peril than appears. 
It could not have come down to us so far 
Through the interstices of things ajar 
On the long bead chain of repeated birth 
To be a bird while we are men on earth 
If singing out of sleep and dream that way 
Had made it much more easily a prey. 

1. Once by the Pacific
2. Canis Major
3. On Going Unnoticed
4. The Valley’s Singing Day
5. But Outer Space

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