Class 6 English Chapter 8: What a Bird Thought

A bird telling its own story

The whole poem is spoken by a bird, looking back. It remembers each place it has lived, in order, and what it believed while it was there. Nothing is described from outside. Every word is the bird's own.

Four stanzas, four worlds

There are four blocks of four lines. Each block holds one world. Reading them in order is like watching somebody move to a bigger and bigger house. The stanzas are all the same size. The worlds inside them are not.

The first world

The opening line has it living first in a little house. It lived there very well. That house was the egg, though the poem never uses the word. Nothing else in the world is small, round and pale blue.

What it believed there

It thought the world was small and round. The shell enclosing it was pale blue. From inside an egg, that is a perfectly sensible description. It is not a guess of any kind. It is a report.

Notice the tone

There is no complaint anywhere in that stanza. The bird was content. It had a world, it fitted, and nothing seemed to be missing. That is the quiet trap the whole poem is built on.

The second world

Next came the nest, and it needed nothing else. The world now seemed to be made of straw, with its mother part of it. The mother appears here and nowhere else in the poem.

Nestled

The word the poem uses is nestled, which means settled in warmly and safely. That one word tells you how the bird felt there. A whole line of describing has been saved by it.

Still completely wrong

And once again, completely sure. The bird has now been certain twice, about two different worlds, and both answers have already been replaced. Certainty is running at nought out of two.

The third world

One day it fluttered from the nest to see what it could find. Fluttered is a small, unsteady word, and it fits a first attempt exactly. The poem could have said flew, and chose not to.

Leaves everywhere

From just outside the nest it saw leaves in every direction. So it said the world is made of leaves, which was its third confident answer. From where it was standing, that was perfectly true.

The line that turns the poem

Then it adds that it had been very blind. That is the first time the bird judges its own past. Something has changed in it. Nothing it says afterwards sounds quite the same.

Why blind is the right word

It was not blind in the eyes. It simply could not see past the nest, and had never thought to wonder what lay further out. Wondering is the part it had been missing all along.

The fourth world

At length it flew beyond the tree, fit for grown-up work. At length means at last, so this took time rather than one brave morning. The bird grew into this flight slowly.

What it says now

And here, for the first time, it does not give an answer. It says it cannot tell how the world is made, and leaves it there. After three answers, silence on the question.

Not a sad ending

That is not a failure. After three confident answers that all turned out wrong, admitting to not knowing is the first reliable thing the bird says. It is also the only answer with room left in it.

And the neighbours

It adds that its neighbours do not know either. So this is not one bird's shortcoming. It is what happens to anybody honest enough to look properly. The poem ends on that, and does not apologise for it.

Scenario:

A teacher asks whether the bird tells the truth in the poem. Nandini says no. She points out that the bird says the world is made of shell, then of straw, then of leaves, and that at most one of those can be right. Omar says the bird is honest every single time. He argues that it never claims to know more than it has seen, and that it describes exactly as much of the world as is in front of it. Nandini asks how a person can be honest and wrong at once. Their teacher points them to the third stanza, where the bird says outright that it was mistaken before.

Analysis:

Three answers that contradict each other, from a speaker nobody thinks is lying.

Activity:

Write a fifth stanza for the bird, keeping the same honesty about what it can see.

Title:

The world from one window

What You Notice:

Two honest descriptions of the same world will barely overlap, and both of them will be correct as far as they go. That is the bird's whole problem in four stanzas. The last step is the interesting one, because knowing that something exists beyond your window is exactly what the bird could not do until it flew.

Nobody knows who wrote this poem. It is printed as anonymous, which means the writer's name was never recorded.

At length is an old way of saying at last. It suggests time passing rather than a sudden event.

The word labours means work, and here it means the ordinary work of a grown bird, such as finding its own food.

The four worlds — SHELL - STRAW - LEAVES - SKY — Egg, nest, first flutter, and the flight beyond the tree. Each world is larger than the one before it.

Why the ending is the best answer — Three sure and wrong, one unsure and right — The bird only becomes reliable at the moment it stops being certain.

A chime at the end

Read any stanza of this poem aloud and you will hear two lines ending on the same sound. They are never next to each other. That gap between them is part of the effect.

Lines two and four

The pattern is the same every time. The first and third lines are left free, and the second and fourth chime with each other. Four stanzas, and not one exception anywhere.

The four pairs

Well and shell in the first stanza. Other and mother in the second. Find and blind in the third. Labours and neighbours in the last. Four pairs, and you can find them all inside a minute.

Why not every line

Rhyming all four lines would make the poem sound like a chant. Leaving two lines free lets it move at the pace of somebody talking. A poem about working something out ought to sound like thinking.

Rhyme is a sound

Here is the part that catches people out. A rhyme is about how a word ends when you say it, not about the letters on the page. The page and the ear disagree constantly in English.

Spelled alike, sounding different

Through and rough end with the same four letters and do not rhyme at all. Neither do dear and bear, or come and home. Each of those pairs looks like a safe bet and is not.

Spelled differently, rhyming perfectly

Blue and through share almost no letters and rhyme exactly. So do bird and heard, and so do their and there. No shared ending at all, and a perfect match.

The test

Say the two words out loud, one after the other. No rule is needed for this, and none would help you. Your ear will decide in an instant, and it will be right.

Building new ones

Once you have a rhyme you can collect more. Shell gives you bell, fell, tell, sell and smell. Find gives you kind, mind and behind. One rhyme usually brings a whole family with it.

Writing your own stanza

The difficulty comes when you need a rhyme that also makes sense. You will find a good word for one line and nothing useful for the next. Then the line starts pulling your meaning around after it.

The other kind of word

Now look at a different job. The poem is full of words telling you what things are like: pale, blue, round, straw, little. Not one of them is a word you had to be taught.

What they do

These are describing words. Each answers the question what kind, and each does in one word what a whole sentence would otherwise have to do. A four-line stanza has no room for a whole sentence.

Plain on purpose

Notice how ordinary they are. Nothing in this poem is magnificent or glorious. A small bird would not reach for words like that, and the poem knows it. Plainness here is a decision rather than a shortage.

More of them

Your book adds several others to try: pointed, green, thin, brown, small, wooden, hanging and round. Each would suit some things and not others. Working out which is which is the whole difficulty.

They have to suit

A hanging nest makes sense, and so does a pointed beak. A hanging colour is grammatically perfect and means nothing at all. Grammar will never once warn you about this.

How to check

Put the describing word in front of the thing and read it aloud. If you can picture it, it suits. If you cannot, choose again. Your eye for a picture is the only test there is.

Scenario:

A class is asked to finish a stanza. Its second line must rhyme with know, and its fourth must rhyme with best. Arun writes that he flies to and fro. He ends by saying that his nest is where he rests. Bina writes that he flies down below. She ends by saying his own little nest is the best. Chandan writes that he flies through the snow. He ends by saying that he likes his nest the most. Their teacher says two of them have a problem. She adds that it is not the same problem, and asks the class to work out each one.

Analysis:

One pupil rhymed and said nothing. One said something and did not rhyme. Only one managed both, which is the whole difficulty of writing a stanza.

Activity:

Write your own two missing lines for the same stanza, then read them to a partner and ask whether the rhyme cost you any of the meaning.

Title:

Ear against eye

What You Notice:

Most people get two or three wrong out of ten, which is far more than they expect. The pairs that catch you will usually contain ough, ear or ove, because those are the spellings that drifted furthest from their sounds. Once you have been caught twice, you will start saying words aloud before you decide, which is the whole point of the exercise.

English spelling was fixed long after the sounds had started drifting, which is why so many words that look alike no longer sound alike.

Poets sometimes choose a word for its sound before they choose it for its meaning, and then build the line around it.

Where the rhymes fall — Lines 2 and 4 — Every stanza, without exception. Once you know that, you can find all four pairs in under a minute.

Testing a rhyme — Say it, do not spell it — Blue and through rhyme. Through and rough do not. Your ear settles both cases instantly and your eye gets both wrong.

What the bird could not do

The poem is about a creature that could only describe its own window. It was honest every time, and wrong every time, because it never stood anywhere else. That is a limit, not a fault.

The task here

This part of the chapter asks you to do exactly what the bird could not. Stand somewhere you have never stood, and describe the world from there. It is the one thing writing can do that eyes cannot.

The speaking job

First you become a bird and tell the class about yourself. There are five things to cover, and they are given to you in order. Covering four of them is not covering the task.

The five points

Which bird you are. What you look like. Where you live. What you do during the day. And a message for humans. Four of those look outward. One looks in.

The one people forget

Four of those describe you. The fifth asks you to say something, which makes it different in kind, and it is the one that gets dropped. Plan it first and it will survive.

Why the message matters

A description tells a class what a bird is. A message tells them what it wants, and that is the only place your bird gets an opinion. Without it you have described a bird and never met one.

The listening job

Then you listen to a short poem about a parrot and fill in the missing words. Listening for one exact word is harder than listening for a meaning. A meaning can be pieced together afterwards. A word cannot.

A tip for that

Read the gaps before the poem starts. Knowing what shape of word is missing tells your ear what to wait for. You are then listening for something rather than at something.

The writing job

Now the difficult one. Describe the world as a baby would find it, and then as a fish would find it. Five sentences each, and every one of them tested.

Not about imagination

Everybody can imagine being a fish. The real work is discipline, which means keeping out of your writing everything that creature has no way of knowing. What you know arrives uninvited, which is the trouble.

What a fish cannot say

A fish cannot tell you that the sky is blue, or that water is wet. It has never been out of water, so it has nothing to compare. Wet is a word that needs dry to exist.

What a baby cannot say

A baby has no use for next week, or for the name of the street. Its world is made of faces, sounds, and whether it is warm. No clocks, no names, no reasons for anything.

Use the model

Your book gives you the bird's own version. It moves in order, from the small round world to the large one, and each world gets a sentence or two. Copy the shape of it and not the words.

Then the exploring

The last part asks what your own home is made of. Bricks, cement, wood, glass, iron, tiles. Make the list before you read on. Then ask what each one is actually doing there.

Why not straw

The bird's nest was straw and that was enough for a bird. Straw will not keep out heavy rain, and it will not keep out fire or thieves. A nest never had to do any of that.

House and home

One last distinction. A house is a building, and it can be bought, counted and left empty. A home is somewhere you belong, and a nest can be one. The bird in this poem had three homes and no house at all.

Scenario:

A class is asked to write as a fish, describing the world from inside the water. Priya writes that the water is cool and wet. She adds that the sky above her is blue, and that she can see the sun setting behind the hills. Tanvir writes that his world is green and always moving. He says light comes down from above and breaks apart when the surface stirs. He adds that there is a place overhead where the world stops and will not let him through. Their teacher reads both aloud without names. She asks the class which one stayed inside the fish.

Analysis:

Priya described a fish from outside it. Tanvir described the world from inside one, and had to invent his own way of naming the surface.

Activity:

Write five sentences as a fish, then underline every word you nearly used and had to cross out.

Title:

What is your home made of?

What You Notice:

Every material on your list is doing a job, and most of them are doing a job that straw cannot do at all. The last sentence is the one worth keeping. Nothing on your materials list will explain why the place is a home, because the answer has nothing to do with what it is built from.

Different birds build completely different homes. Some hang them from branches, some dig into banks, and some use no nest at all.

Building one house needs a great many trades: a mason for the bricks, a carpenter for the wood, a plumber for the water and an electrician for the wiring.

The five speaking points — WHO - LOOK - LIVE - DO - SAY — Which bird, what you look like, where you live, what you do all day, and your message for humans. The last one is the one people drop.

Writing from somewhere else — What could it possibly know? — Ask that of every sentence. A fish cannot mention the colour of the sky, and a baby cannot mention next week.