"The Oven Bird" is a well-known sonnet from Robert Frost's collection Mountain Interval (1916). It describes a "mid-summer" songbird whose call the speaker interprets as a lament about the swift passage of time. According to the speaker, the bird is wondering how to respond to the decline from spring to fall. However, there's the suggestion that the speaker is projecting his human feelings onto the bird—wondering how he as a poet, or people in general, should cope with aging and loss.
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The Full Text of “The Oven Bird”
1There is a singer everyone has heard,
2Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird,
3Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again.
4He says that leaves are old and that for flowers
5Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten.
6He says the early petal-fall is past
7When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers
8On sunny days a moment overcast;
9And comes that other fall we name the fall.
10He says the highway dust is over all.
11The bird would cease and be as other birds
12But that he knows in singing not to sing.
13The question that he frames in all but words
14Is what to make of a diminished thing.
The Full Text of “The Oven Bird”
1There is a singer everyone has heard,
2Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird,
3Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again.
4He says that leaves are old and that for flowers
5Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten.
6He says the early petal-fall is past
7When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers
8On sunny days a moment overcast;
9And comes that other fall we name the fall.
10He says the highway dust is over all.
11The bird would cease and be as other birds
12But that he knows in singing not to sing.
13The question that he frames in all but words
14Is what to make of a diminished thing.
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“The Oven Bird” Summary
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“The Oven Bird” Themes
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Time, Loss, and Disappointment
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The Purpose and Power of Art
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “The Oven Bird”
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Lines 1-2
There is a singer everyone has heard,
Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird, -
Line 3
Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again.
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Lines 4-5
He says that leaves are old and that for flowers
Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten. -
Lines 6-8
He says the early petal-fall is past
When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers
On sunny days a moment overcast; -
Lines 9-10
And comes that other fall we name the fall.
He says the highway dust is over all. -
Lines 11-12
The bird would cease and be as other birds
But that he knows in singing not to sing. -
Lines 13-14
The question that he frames in all but words
Is what to make of a diminished thing.
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“The Oven Bird” Symbols
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The Seasons
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Dust
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Song
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“The Oven Bird” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Alliteration
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Assonance
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Anaphora
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Extended Metaphor
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Simile
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Paradox
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Repetition
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Imagery
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Anthropomorphism
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Rhetorical Question
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“The Oven Bird” Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Mid-wood
- Sound
- Petal-fall
- Pear
- Fall
- Cease
- Diminished
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- See where this vocabulary word appears in the poem.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “The Oven Bird”
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Form
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Meter
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Rhyme Scheme
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“The Oven Bird” Speaker
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“The Oven Bird” Setting
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Literary and Historical Context of “The Oven Bird”
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More “The Oven Bird” Resources
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External Resources
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A Frost Doc — Watch "A Lover's Quarrel Wit a 1963 documentary on Frost.
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Interview with the Poet — Watch a 1952 interview with Robert Frost.
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A Reading of the Poem — Listen to a reading of "The Oven Bird," courtesy of The Frost Place.
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The Poet's Life and Work — Read a biography of Frost, along with other Frost poems, via the Poetry Foundation.
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Frost at the Library — Explore the Robert Frost collection at the Rauner Special Collections Library, Dartmouth College.
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The Ovenbird in Action — Watch a video of the ovenbird making its distinctive call.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Robert Frost
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