THE FIRE-HANGBIRD'S NEST
I can remember that I used to knee my trousers through,
That mother used to wonder how my legs got black and blue,
And how she used to talk to me and make stern threats when she
Discovered that my hobby was the nest in yonder tree;
How, as she patched my trousers or greased my purple legs,
She told me 'twould be wicked to destroy a hangbird's eggs,
And then she'd call on father and on gran'pa to attest
That they, as boys, had never robbed an old fire-hangbird's nest!
Yet all those years I coveted the trophy flaunting there,
While, as it were in mockery of my abject despair,
The old fire-hangbird confidently used to come and go,
As if she were indifferent to the bandit horde below!
And sometimes clinging to her nest we thought we heard her chide
The callow brood whose cries betrayed the fear that reigned inside:
"Hush, little dears! all profitless shall be their wicked quest—
I knew my business when I built the old fire-hangbird's nest!"
For many, very many years that mother-bird has come
To rear her pretty little brood within that cosey home.
She is the selfsame bird of old—I 'm certain it is she—
Although the chances are that she has quite forgotten me.
[34]
