Poetry · Chapter
If I Were to Own explained
The speaker imagines owning a vast countryside with many named estates and features, and considers giving them all to his son in exchange for a single blackbird's song at dawn.
What happens
The speaker imagines owning a vast countryside with many named estates and features, and considers giving them all to his son in exchange for a single blackbird's song at dawn. The fantasy turns dark as he envisions shooting all the blackbirds, leaving himself old and alone, and then needing to pay rent with a song as sweet as a blackbird's or lose the house.
Themes in this chapter
Place and Belonging
The detailed naming of Essex estates and features emphasizes a deep connection to the land and the idea of ownership.
Solitude and Reflection
The speaker's imagined future of being 'old and alone' after destroying the blackbirds highlights a solitary and reflective consequence.
Characters to notice
- Unknown
The speaker who imagines owning the land and bargaining with his son.
- The Winter Thrush
Referenced as the thrush whose songs are 'proverbs untranslatable' in the hedges.
Key passages
“If I were to own this countryside As far as a man in a day could ride”
If I possessed all the land a person could travel across in a single day on horseback.
Opens the poem with a hypothetical wish for vast ownership.
“I would give them all to my son If he would let me any one For a song, a blackbird’s song, at dawn.”
I would hand over all these estates to my son if he would allow me to keep just one thing: a blackbird's song at dawn.
Expresses the speaker's willingness to trade material wealth for a simple natural pleasure.
“He should have no more, till on my lawn Never a one was left, because I Had shot them to put them into a pie— His Essex blackbirds, every one, And I was left old and alone.”
He would have nothing left until I had shot every blackbird on my lawn to make a pie, leaving me old and solitary.
Reveals a dark turn where the speaker destroys the very thing he valued.