Observations placeholder
Frost, Robert - A bird half wakened in the lunar noon
Identifier
007388
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
The following beautiful poem of Robert Frost's can be taken literally - just a little poem about a bird singing in its sleep - or as an allegory of the mystic or spiritually aware person – the person that dares to put his head above the parapet to briefly sing his tune.
It is an allegory of the continuation of spirituality, even in the face of apparent danger. The mystic will always be there even if it means he has to sing the song as though it was not him singing it, or he has to disguise the message as myth, legend, story or poem; or he has to make the tune very short, so that the hostile forces against him don't have time to catch him. It is also indicative of the fact that the hostile forces will always be with us and that they are hostile even if we don't go that 'high' .....
A description of the experience
Robert Frost – from The Poetry of Robert Frost
A bird half wakened in the lunar noon
Sang halfway 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