The Bird by Edwin Muir
![Meadow Pipit - The Hall of Einar - photograph (c) David Bailey (not the)](https://www.thehallofeinar.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Meadow-Pipit-The-Hall-of-Einar-2674.jpg)
Here’s another of my favourite poems by Orcadian poet Edwin Muir.
The Bird
Adventurous bird walking upon the air,
Like a schoolboy running and loitering, leaping and springing,
Pensively pausing, suddenly changing your mind
To turn at ease on the heel of a wing-tip. Where
In all the crystalline world was there to find
For your so delicate walking and airy winging
A floor so perfect, so firm and so fair,
And where a ceiling and walls so sweetly ringing,
Whenever you sing, to your clear singing?
The wide-winged soul itself can ask no more
Than such a pure, resilient and endless floor
For its strong-pinioned plunging and soaring and upward and upward springing.
![Meadow Pipit - The Hall of Einar - photograph (c) David Bailey (not the)](https://www.thehallofeinar.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Meadow-Pipit-The-Hall-of-Einar-2676.jpg)
I have wondered many times which bird Edwin Muir might have meant when he wrote this poem. It was when I photographed this Meadow Pipit flying on the mainland of Orkney that I felt it was just right. Then I realised that the poem isn’t really about a bird at all.
I still treasure my copy of Edwin Muir’s Selected Poems. Here’s a link so you discover it for yourself:
More Edwin Muir
![Owlfly - Italy - The Hall of Einar - photograph (c) David Bailey (not the)](https://www.thehallofeinar.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Owlfly-Southern-Italy-1520-300x200.jpg)
![Noltland Castle - The Hall of Einar - photograph (c) David Bailey (not the)](https://www.thehallofeinar.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/DSC_1287-300x199.jpg)
![Alone on the rocky shore - The Hall of Einar - photograph (c) David Bailey (not the)](https://www.thehallofeinar.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/DSC_2535-2-300x199.jpg)
![Fledging Swallow - The Hall of Einar - photograph (c) 2016 David Bailey (not the)](https://www.thehallofeinar.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/NIK_8676-300x199.jpg)
![The Hall of Einar - photograph (c) David Bailey (not the)](https://www.thehallofeinar.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/DSC_1398-300x199.jpg)
![The Horses - a poem by Edwin Muir - photograph (c) David Bailey (not the)](https://www.thehallofeinar.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/NIK_3249-Edit-300x199.jpg)