Quote: Anonymous

Bird of the fierce delight,
Brother of foam as white
And winged as foam is,
Wheeling again from flight
To some unfooted height
Where your blithe home is:

   Bird of the wind and spray,
   Crying by night and day
   Sorrowful laughter,
   How shall man’s thought survey
   Your will or your wings’ way,
   Or follow after?

What pride is man’s, and why,
Angel of air, should I
Joy to be human?
You walk and swim and fly,
Laugh like a man and cry
Like any woman.

   I would your spirit were mine
   When your wings dip and shine,
   Smoothly advancing;
   I drink a breathless wine
   Of speed in your divine
   Aerial dancing.

This piece is called “To a Sea-Gull” and I encountered it in a little book called Icarus: An Anthology of the Poetry of Flight. This compilation was produced in 1938 by several cadets and one “R de la Bere,” as a collection of verse honoring flight, from all regions and times.

Like a number of the other poems in the compilation, this one has no author attributed. It is presumably not Jonathan Livingston Seagull. Lovely meter though.