The Great White Owl

By Celia Thaxter

Annotations by Will Smith

He sat aloft on the rocky height,
     Snow-white above the snow,
In the winter morning calm and bright,
     And I gazed at him, below.

He faced the east where the sunshine streamed
     On the singing, sparkling sea,
And he blinked with his yellow eyes that seemed
     All sightless and blank to be.

The snow-birds swept in a whirling crowd
     About him gleefully,
And piped and whistled, sweet and loud,
     But never a plume stirred he.

Singing they passed and away they flew
     Through the brilliant atmosphere;
Cloud-like he sat with the living blue
     Of the sky behind him, clear.

"Give you good morrow, friend!" I cried.
     He wheeled his large round head
Solemn and stately from side to side,
     But never a word he said.

"O lonely creature, weird and white,
     Why are you sitting there,
Like a glimmering ghost from the still midnight
     In the beautiful morning air?"

He spurned the rock with his talons strong,
     No human speech brooked he;
Like a snow-flake huge he sped along,
     Swiftly and noiselessly.

His wide slow-waving wings so white
     Heavy and soft did seem,
Yet rapid as a dream his flight,
     And silent as a dream.

And when a distant crag he gained,
     Bright twinkling as a star,
He shook his shining plumes, and deigned
     To watch me from afar.

And once again, when the evening red
     Burned dimly in the west,
I saw him motionless, his head
     Bent forward on his breast.

Dark and still 'gainst the sunset sky
     Stood out his figure lone,
Crowning the bleak rock, far and high,
     By sad winds overblown.

Did he dream of the ice-fields. stark and drear,
     Of his haunts on the Arctic shore?
Or the downy brood in his nest last year
     On the coast of Labrador?

Had he fluttered the Esquimau huts among?
     How I wished he could speak to me!
Had he sailed on the icebergs, rainbow hung,
     In the open Polar Sea?

O, many a tale he might have told
     Of marvellous sounds and sights,
Where the world lies hopeless and dumb with cold
     Through desolate days and nights.

But with folded wings, while the darkness fell,
     He sat, nor spake nor stirred;
And charmed as if by a subtile spell [1]
     I mused on the wondrous Bird. 

Thaxter, Celia. “The Great White Owl.” Our young Folks: An illustrated magazine for Boys and Girls 7, no. 3 (March 1871): 148-49.