R.S. Thomas was very close to nature in his beloved Welsh countryside.
Here he comments on the rich, but loaded, song of the blackbird.
A BLACKBIRD SINGING
It seems wrong that out of this bird,
Black, bold, a suggestion of dark
Places about it, there yet should come
Such rich music, as though the notes'
Ore were changed to a rare metal
At one touch of that bright bill.
You have heard it often, alone at your desk
In a green April, your mind drawn
Away from its work by sweet disturbance
Of the mild evening outside your room.
A slow singer, but loading each phrase
With history's overtones, love, joy
And grief learned by his dark tribe
In other orchards and passed on
Instinctively as they are now,
But fresh always with new tears.
R.S. Thomas
Thomas was not the only person to comment on the song of the blackbird.
On Saturday 23 May 1663, Samuel Pepys wrote in his diary:
"Waked this morning between four and five by my blackbird, which whistles as well as ever I heard any; only it is the beginning of many tunes very well, but there leaves them, and goes no further."
However, Pepys' blackbird was in a cage. "He had in his house a box of carpenters tools, two dogs, an eagle, a canary, and a blackbird that whistled tunes. (R.L. Stevenson on Pepys)"
