Stephen Sondheim:Green Finch and Linnet Bird

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 flowing?
Is it rejoicing or merely halloing?
Are you discussing or fussing or simply dreaming?

Are you crowing?
Are you screaming?

Ring dove and robinette 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.