[Lyric] Green Finch and Linnet Bird (Judy Collins)

Green Finch and Linnet bird
Nightingale, Blackbird
How is it you sing?

How can you jubilate
Sitting in cages
Never taking wing?

Outside the sky waits
Beckoning, beckoning
Just beyond the bars

How can you remain
Staring at the rain
Maddened by the stars?

How is it you sing anything?
How is it you sing?

Green Finch and Linnet bird
Nightingale, Blackbird
How is it you sing?
Whence comes this melody
Constantly floating?
Is it rejoicing or merely a loaming?

Are you discussing?
Or fussing
Or simply dreaming?

Are you crowing?
Are you screaming?
Ring dove and Robinet

Is it for wages?
Singing to be sold?
Have you decided it's safer in cages
Singing when you’re told?

My cage has many rooms
Damask and dark
Nothing there sings
Not even my Lark

Larks never will, you know
When they're captive
Teach me to be more adaptive
Green Finch and Linnet bird
Nightingale, Blackbird
Teach me how to sing

If I cannot fly
Let me sing