Dear Readers, I have been sitting at my desk watching sparrow after sparrow land on the windowsill and then fly off at speed. I have no idea what they’re up to, but my curiosity is definitely piqued. I suspect it’s two adult birds and their youngsters, and they seem to have a great deal of interest in the gutters, where maybe some tasty morsels lurk.

So, I decided to see what poems people had written about sparrows, and came across the one below, by Paul Laurence Dunbar. He lived from 1872 to 1906, and was one of the first recognised African American poets. He never went to college, and worked at various times as an elevator operator, and at the World’s Fair. He was befriended by Frederick Douglass, who called him ‘the most promising young coloured man in America’. In his spare time, Dunbar read the work of the Romantic poets, and you can see the influence in his poem below.

Dunbar died, from tuberculosis, aged thirty-three.

The Sparrow
Paul Laurence Dunbar 
1872 –
1906

A little bird, with plumage brown,
Beside my window flutters down,
A moment chirps its little strain,
Ten taps upon my window–pane,
And chirps again, and hops along,
To call my notice to its song;
But I work on, nor heed its lay,
Till, in neglect, it flies away.

So birds of peace and hope and love
Come fluttering earthward from above,
To settle on life’s window–sills,
And ease our load of earthly ills;
But we, in traffic’s rush and din
Too deep engaged to let them in,
With deadened heart and sense plod on,
Nor know our loss till they are gone.