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The second poem, unlike the first, is an address to the bird by the poet.
In it he emphatically affirms the illusory nature of the world and implies
that the bird does not belong to this order of things. By referring to it
as the "bird of my heart," he specifically identifies the bird as a symbol
for his innermost self. He urges this self to detach itself utterly from the
world and to proceed with one-pointed determination. Used in this fashion,
as a symbol for the poet's inner life, the bird conveys a sense of dynamic
motion, while still retaining the slightly ethereal and mysterious overtones
of one that inhabits realms beyond man's comprehension.

It is this subtle evanescent quality that is captured in the third poem
quoted above. The poet becomes aware of the bird's presence in his mind but
finds that he cannot pierce its true identity. Although it dwells within
the finite dimensions of the "mind-forest," he knows that it has the larger
vision, that it reaches for Heaven's. perfection. The poet concludes that
the bird's identity must necessarily remain veiled until "the end of my life's
journey" when he returns to the source, that unnameable essence of which
the bird is a small portion.

In these three poems, we see the symbol of the bird acquiring slightly differing
modulations according to the poet's emphasis. Although its meaning is consistently
that of an emissary from the Heavenly sphere, a part of the eternal life of
the spirit, this is maintained at a level of suggestiveness which prevents
the symbol from becoming either too rigid or too fixed. It allows the poet
more freedom in his application of the symbol, a freedom which he utilises
in the following examples by connecting the bird with varying abstract nouns:

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