Blue Jay Poems

Table of Contents

Poems About Blue Jays

1. The Blue Jay

   by Emily Dickinson

   
   

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   No brigadier throughout the year
   So civic as the jay.
   A neighbor and a warrior too,
   With shrill felicity

   Pursuing winds that censure us
   A February day,
   The brother of the universe
   Was never blown away.

   The snow and he are intimate;
   I 've often seen them play
   When heaven looked upon us all
   With such severity,

   I felt apology were due
   To an insulted sky,
   Whose pompous frown was nutriment
   To their temerity.

   The pillow of this daring head
   Is pungent evergreens;
   His larder — terse and militant —
   Unknown, refreshing things;

   His character a tonic,
   His future a dispute;
   Unfair an immortality
   That leaves this neighbor out.

2. Blue Jay

   by Hilda Conkling

   
   

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   All the flowers are sleeping,
   A feather blanket of snow
   Over them.
   Blue Jay balances on a dry old sunflower's bent head . . .
   He dives under . . .
   He strikes out seeds with angry beak.
   His wings are barred with frost,
   His snow-dusty feet
   Are like dull crystal.
   I like him . . . almost . . .
   But must he keep on screeching in such a voice
   And the flowers at their wits' end
   For a little quiet?
   

3. The Blue Jay

   by Hamlin Garland

   
   

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   His eye is bright as burnished steel,
   His note a quick defiant cry;
   Harsh as a hinge his grating squeal
   Sounds from the keen wind sweeping by.
   

   Rain never dims his smooth blue coat,
   The winter never troubles him.
   No fog puts hoarseness in his throat
   Or makes his merry eyes grow dim.
   His cry at morning is a shout. —
   His wing is subject to his heart.
   Of fear he knows not—doubt
   Did not draw his sailing-chart.
   

   He is an universal emigre;
   His foot is set in every land.
   He greets me by gray Casco bay,
   And laughs across the Texas sand.
   In heat or cold, in storm or sun
   He lives unfearingly, and when he dies
   He folds his feet up one by one
   And turns his last look at the skies.
   

   He is the true American! He fears
   No journey and no wood or wall
   And in the desert, toiling voyagers
   Take heart of courage from his call.
   

4. The Blue Jay

   by Frank Bolles

   
   

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   From among Chocorua's tenants,
   From among the birds of Crowlands,
   One in all eyes is a villain.
   Loathed, detested, hated, dreaded,
   Known to be a thief and ruffian,
   Known to be a foul assassin,
   Known to be a sneak and coward,
   Hated doubly for his beauty.
   

   Crows are open in marauding,
   Crows are black and bold and bragging;
   Owls confine their crimes to twilight
   Or the hours of moonlit silence;
   Hawks in highest heaven hover,
   Soar in sight of all their victims:
   None can charge them with deception,
   All their crimes are deeds of daring.
   

   Clad in blue with snow-white trimmings,
   Clean and smooth in every feather,
   Plumed and crested like a dandy,
   Keen of vision, strong of muscle,
   Shrewd in mimicry and dodging,
   Knowing every copse and thicket,
   Warm in snow and cool in summer,
   Is the blue jay still a villain?
   Outlawed by all bird tribunals,
   As a wretch disguised, he's branded,
   Shunned by every feathered creature;
   Yet he prospers, man admires him.
   

   Through the tedious months of winter
   Round the com-barn's step he lingers,
   Boldly down among the poultry
   Comes he to secure their kernels;
   Through the barb'ries, through the cedars,
   Prowls he searching for their berries,
   In the spruces, in the hemlocks,
   Cocoons from the bark detaching.
   

   But so soon as in the Maytime
   Eggs are laid and young are hatching,
   Berries, buds, and worms rejecting,
   Turns this scourge to sweeter morsels;
   Woe awaits the early songster
   Whose uncovered nest he chances
   To discover as he's sneaking
   Through the forest seeking plunder;
   Wise the nuthatch and the titmouse
   Wise the bluebird and the downy,
   To conceal their nests in tree-trunks
   Where this monster cannot find them;
   Ask the vireo what happens,
   Ask the junco where her eggs are,
   Ask the thrush and ask the robin
   What assassin slew their young ones.
   

   Hundreds perish in the season,
   Egg and young of birds as useful
   As their slayer is unfriendly
   To the ways and plans of farmers.
   Retribution sometimes follows
   On the footsteps of this monster.
   Crows will fly among the savins,
   Search among the bristling branches,
   Find the nests of roots and bark strips
   Armed with barbs and twined with brambles,
   Full of eggs or young just gaping —
   Dainty morsels those for crows tongues.
   Harsh the clamor when the robber
   Comes to find his own home wasted,
   Wild the screams and fierce the anger,
   Vain the flights around the nesting.
   Man admires him for his feathers,
   Loves to watch him in the winter
   Boldly fly among the poultry,
   Snatching golden kernels from them,
   But his peers alone can judge him
   Justly, clearly, on his merits.
   One and all they call him outlaw,
   Hate him, loathe him, fear him, spurn him.
   

   Be his plumage light and dainty
   He is cousin to the raven,
   Near of kin is he to Corvus,
   Black his heart, and black his kindred,
   False his colors, false his nature.
   All his beauty is delusion,
   All his tricks are tricks of darkness;
   Grim Chocorua through his cloud veil
   Ever looks askance upon him.
   

5. O Jay

   by George Parsons Lathrop

   
   

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   O jay —
   Blue-jay! —
   What are you trying to say?
   I remember, in the spring
   You pretended you could sing;
   But your voice is now still queerer,
   And as yet you've come no nearer
   To a song.
   In fact, to sum the matter,
   I never heard a flatter
   Failure than your doleful clatter.
   Don't you think it's wrong?
   It was sweet to hear your note,
   I'll not deny,
   When April set pale clouds afloat
   O'er the blue tides of sky,
   And 'mid the wind's triumphant drums
   You, in your white and azure coat,
   A herald proud, came forth to cry,
   "The royal summer comes!"
   

   But now that autumn's here,
   And the leaves curl up in sheer
   Disgust,
   And the cold rains fringe the pine,
   You really must
   Stop that supercilious whine —
   Or you'll be shot, by some mephitic
   Angry critic.
   

   You don't fulfill your early promise:
   You're not the smartest
   Kind of artist,
   Any more than poor Blind Tom is.
   Yet somehow, still,
   There's meaning in your screaming bill.
   What are you trying to say?
   

   Sometimes your piping is delicious,
   And then again it's simply vicious;
   Though on the whole the varying jangle
   Weaves round me an entrancing tangle
   Of memories grave or joyous:
   Things to weep or laugh at;
   Love that lived at a hint, or
   Days so sweet, they'd cloy us;
   Nights I have spent with friends; —
   Glistening groves of winter,
   And the sound of vanished feet
   That walked by the ripening wheat;
   With other things.... Not the half that
   Your cry familiar blends
   Can I name, for it is mostly
   Very ghostly; —
   Such mixed-up things your voice recalls,
   With its peculiar quirks and falls.
   

   Possibly, then, your meaning, plain,
   Is that your harsh and broken strain
   Tallies best with a world of pain.
   

   Well, I'll admit
   There's merit in a voice that's truthful:
   Yours is not honey-sweet nor youthful,
   But querulously fit.
   And if we cannot sing, we'll say
   Something to the purpose, jay!
   

6. A prompt — executive Bird is the Jay —

   by Emily Dickinson

   A prompt, executive Bird is the Jay,
   Bold as a Bailiff's hymn,
   Brittle and brief in quality—
   Warrant in every line;
   Sitting a bough like a Brigadier,
   Confident and straight,
   Much is the mien
   Of him in March
   As a Magistrate.
   

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