Poetry Bird-Table
IF I might choose, I would be a wren :
To be so small among birds and men,.
And yet so neatly planned to scale, Must be to live in a fairy-tale.
If not a wren, I would be a tit, Drunk with my own swift flicker and flit, Upside, downside, here and away, Efficient, arrogant, beautiful, gay.
I would not be, perhaps, for choice, A thrush (yet how I'd love his voice 1) ; He hardly gets enough to Being so shy and sensitive.
The blackbird, -though with notes as mellow, Is, by some means, a stouter fellow ; He plies his art, and yet contrives
To share the meals of meaner lives
The chaffinch is a thonght too prim ; But I would gladly change with him, And wear a coat of many a colour (With never a bill to make it duller).
For Bobin my respect is slight—
He's far too ready for a fight ; Still, his are the rewards of fame : All feed him, for all know his name.
Impossible to dub a darling The burnished but plebeian starling ; Yet gratefully I would exchange My trammels for his wider range :
And oh—this life's a thing so narrow—
I wouldn't disdain to be a sparrow ,V. H. FRIEDLAENDER.
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