“Hope is the thing with feathers, that perches in the soul, and sings the tune without the words, and never stops at all”
– Emily Dickinson
“Thou wast not born for death, immortal bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown …”
– John Keats, Ode To A Nightingale
“No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings”
– William Blake
“Just by the wooden brig a bird flew up,
Frit by the cowboy as he scrambled down
To reach the misty dewberry”
– John Clare, The Yellowhammer’s Nest
“If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family anatidae on our hands”
– Douglas Adams
“Be like the bird who, pausing in her flight awhile on boughs too slight, feels them give way beneath her, and yet sings, knowing she has wings”
– Victor Hugo
“God gives every bird his worm, but He does not throw it into the nest”
– PD James
“Poetry is like a bird, it ignores all frontiers”
– Yevgeny Yevtushenko
“Hail to thee, blithe spirit!
Bird thou never wert”
– Percy Bysse Shelley, To a Skylark
“I caught this morning morning’s minion, kingdom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn falcon”
– Gerard Manley Hopkins, The Windhover
“A bird does not sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song”
— Maya Angelou
IBSEN’S classic play Hedda Gabler is the next on stage at the Studio Theatre where Amateur Players of Sherborne have made their home. Directed by Graham Smith, the production runs from 24th to 29th March, nightly at 7.30.