Summary

The poem begins with the narrator describing the eye of a blackbird: “Among twenty snowy mountains, / The only moving thing / Was the eye of the blackbird” (1). This image suggests a vast wintry vista and calls attention to a tiny speck of motion amidst a stillness. For the narrator, this leads to reflection on being “of three minds” (2). This state of varied perspective and inner conflict is compared to being a tree housing three different blackbirds.

The third canto is brief – only two lines. It shifts in tone and describes a different vista, although it may merely be the same vista from a different perspective: “The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds. / It was a small part of the pantomime” (3.) The movement of the blackbird is now dramatic and the climate itself is forceful. The narrator states in the fourth canto that man and woman...