Birds and Bees

Bird Song 

Lyrics by Robert Hunter 

Music Jerry Garcia 

A song written after the passing of Janis Joplin 

All I know something like a bird within her sang

All I know she sang a little while and then flew on

Tell me all that you know

I'll show you

snow and rain

If you hear that same sweet song again,will you know why?

Anyone who sings a tune so sweet is passing by

Laugh in the sunshine

Sing,cry in the dark

Fly through the night

Birds of Passage

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Black shadows fall
From the lindens tall,

That lift aloft their massive wall

  Against the southern sky; 

And from the realms

Of the shadowy elms

A tide-like darkness overwhelms

  The fields that round us lie. 

But the night is fair,

And everywhere

A warm, soft vapor fills the air,

  And distant sounds seem near, 

And above, in the light

Of the star-lit night,

Swift birds of passage wing their flight

  Through the dewy atmosphere. 

I hear the beat

Of their pinions fleet,

As from the land of snow and sleet

  They seek a southern lea. 

I hear the cry

Of their voices high

Falling dreamily through the sky,

  But their forms I cannot see. 

O, say not so!

Those sounds that flow

In murmurs of delight and woe

  Come not from wings of birds. 

They are the throngs

Of the poet's songs,

Murmurs of pleasures, and pains, and wrongs,

  The sound of winged words. 

This is the cry

Of souls, that high

On toiling, beating pinions, fly,

  Seeking a warmer clime, 

From their distant flight

Through realms of light

It falls into our world of night,

  With the murmuring sound of rhyme. 

George J Carroll

Poem by twentieth century writer

Earliest use of the Bluebird of Happiness

“And in the valley beneath the mountains of my youth,

 lies the river of my tears. 

 As it wends its way to the ocean of my dreams, 

so long ago they have gone.  

And yet, if I were but to think anew, 

would these dreams evaporate in my mind

 and become the morning dew 

upon a supple rose whose beauty is enhanced

 with these glistening drops,

 as the sun of life peeks o’er the mountains

 when youth was full.  

Then I must not supply this endless fountain 

that creates the river of my tears 

but look beyond those mountains 

where the bluebird of happiness flies.”

  Paul McCartney 

on 
The Beatles Blackbird

    "you were only waiting for this moment to arise" was about, you know, the black people's struggle in the southern states, and I was using the symbolism of a blackbird. It's not really about a blackbird whose wings are broken, you know, it's a bit more symbolic.

Birds and the Bees

Jewel Aken 

Let me tell you bout 

The birds and the bees 

 The flower and the trees

 And the moon up above

 And a thing called love