"The Oven Bird" is a 1916 poem by Robert Frost, first published in Mountain Interval. The poem is written in sonnet form and describes an ovenbird singing.
It has been described as a quintessential Frost poem. Several Frost biographers and critics have interpreted the poem as autobiographical. Harold Bloom argues that the bird in Frost is "at best a compromised figure" who learns in singing not to sing.
There is a singer everyone has heard,<br /> Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird,<br /> Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again.<br /> He says that leaves are old and that for flowers<br /> Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten.<br /> He says the early petal-fall is past<br /> When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers<br /> On sunny days a moment overcast;<br /> And comes that other fall we name the fall.<br /> He says the highway dust is over all.<br /> The bird would cease and be as other birds<br /> But that he knows in singing not to sing.<br /> The question that he frames in all but words<br /> Is what to make of a diminished thing.<br />