I've always pictured a glass roof with the little bird flying against the slope and the poet looking up. Doesn't make any sense of course now that I think about it, unless Shade actually lived in a glass house.

 

Well, I've certainly experienced --- not often, but more than once --- seeing, or hearing, a bird fly straight into an upright glass windowpane, and then falling either dead or stunned to the ground outside. There would have to be a clear reflection of the sky in the pane for the bird to be so deluded.

 

Looking at the first 12 lines even more closely (yet again!) I really do find it difficult to make sense, head or tail, of them. "I was the shadow"  Query ? "Shadow"? "I was the smudge of ashen fluff"  Query ? "I'd duplicate myself, my lamp, an apple on a plate" Query ? "Hang all the furniture above the grass" Query ? Frankly, I'm confused.  The lines are definitely striking and memorable, but I'm beginning to think they are virtually nonsensical.

 

The contrast with Herbert's poem could hardly be greater, though I think Shade must also have had Herbert in mind:

 

A man that looks on glass
On it may stay his eye,
Or if he pleaseth, through it pass,
And then the heaven espy.

Clear enough!  Crystal clear in fact. Zembla is Heaven.

Jury out.

Charles