They allow us to hear how his pacing of the final pages completes the aural design of the whole as decisively as any recapitulation in the sonatas of Scarlatti, selections from which Bunting intended to punctuate the poem though they were unfortunately unavailable for this recording. But one can as easily illustrate aural design in the short poems. Hunger ruffles my wings, fear, lust, familiar things. Death thrusts hard. My sons by hawk's beak, by stones, trusting weak wings by cat and weasel, die.
Thunder smothers the sky.
The design here doesn't need spelling out though it merits some study for the play of rhyme, internal or half-rhyme and repeated vowel shapes is too subtle to take in at a glance. The point is that, like the song of the common song thrush which is distinctive for both its variety and its repetition, the sounds are structured into an intricate pattern. They determine the form. This is Bunting's answer to the problems posed by a poet such as Spenser, who can make sounds that glitter in the ears but who too often fails to make them function structurally because he wanted them to serve, in Bunting's view, alien rhythmic methods. These are lost in silent or interrupted reading just as effectively as they are lost if a piece of music is stopped in mid-course.