LiederNet logo

CONTENTS

×
  • Home | Introduction
  • Composers (20,103)
  • Text Authors (19,449)
  • Go to a Random Text
  • What’s New
  • A Small Tour
  • FAQ & Links
  • Donors
  • DONATE

UTILITIES

  • Search Everything
  • Search by Surname
  • Search by Title or First Line
  • Search by Year
  • Search by Collection

CREDITS

  • Emily Ezust
  • Contributors (1,114)
  • Contact Information
  • Bibliography

  • Copyright Statement
  • Privacy Policy

Follow us on Facebook

by Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830 - 1894)

Did any bird come flying
Language: English 
Did any bird come flying
  After Adam and Eve,
When the door was shut against them
  And they sat down to grieve?

I think not Eve's peacock
  Splendid to see,
And I think not Adam's eagle;
  But a dove may be.

Did any beast come pushing
  Through the thorny hedge
Into the thorny, thistly world
  Out from Eden's edge?

I think not a lion,
  Though his strength is such;
But an innocent loving lamb
  May have done as much.

If the dove preached from her bough
  And the lamb from his sod,
The lamb and the dove
  Were preachers sent from God.

About the headline (FAQ)

Text Authorship:

  • by Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830 - 1894), "Bird or Beast?", appears in The Prince's Progress and other Poems, first published 1866 [author's text checked 1 time against a primary source]

Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive):

  • by Cecil Armstrong Gibbs (1889 - 1960), "The Lamb and the Dove", op. 131 no. 1 (1952), published 1953 [ soprano or tenor and piano ], from Three Lyrics by Christina Rossetti, no. 1 [sung text not yet checked]
  • by Martin Edward Fallas Shaw (1875 - 1958), "Bird or Beast?", published 1917 [ voice and piano ] [sung text not yet checked]

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

This text was added to the website: 2007-07-27
Line count: 20
Word count: 102

Gentle Reminder

This website began in 1995 as a personal project by Emily Ezust, who has been working on it full-time without a salary since 2008. Our research has never had any government or institutional funding, so if you found the information here useful, please consider making a donation. Your help is greatly appreciated!
–Emily Ezust, Founder

Donate

We use cookies for internal analytics and to earn much-needed advertising revenue. (Did you know you can help support us by turning off ad-blockers?) To learn more, see our Privacy Policy. To learn how to opt out of cookies, please visit this site.

I acknowledge the use of cookies

Contact
Copyright
Privacy

Copyright © 2025 The LiederNet Archive

Site redesign by Shawn Thuris