THE PEACH
XX
Mamma gave us a single peach,
She shared it among seven;
Now you may think that unto each
But a small piece was given.
Yet though each share was very small,
We own’d, when it was eaten,
Being so little for us all
Did its fine flavour heighten.
The tear was in our parent’s eye,
It seem’d quite out of season;
When we ask’d wherefore she did cry,
She thus explain’d the reason:—
“The cause, my children, I may say,
Was joy, and not dejection;
The peach, which made you all so gay,
Gave rise to this reflection:
“It’s many a mother’s lot to share,
Seven hungry children viewing,
A morsel of the coarsest fare,
As I this peach was doing.”
THE
MAGPIE’S NEST
A FABLE
XXI
When the Arts in their infancy were,
In a fable of old ’tis express’d
A wise magpie constructed that rare
Little house for young birds, call’d a nest.
This was talk’d of the whole country round;
You might hear it on every bough sung,
“Now no longer upon the rough ground
Will fond mothers brood over their young:
“For the magpie with exquisite skill
Has invented a moss-cover’d cell
Within which a whole family will
In the utmost security dwell.”
To her mate did each female bird say,
“Let us fly to the magpie, my dear;
If she will but teach us the way,
A nest we will build us up here.
“It’s a thing that’s close arch’d overhead,
With a hole made to creep out and in;
We, my bird, might make just a bed
If we only knew how to begin.”
To the magpie soon every bird went
And in modest terms made their request,
That she would be pleased to consent
To teach them to build up a nest.
She replied, “I will show you the way,
So observe everything that I do:
First two sticks ’cross each other I lay—”
“To be sure,” said the crow, “why I knew
“It must be begun with two sticks,
And I thought that they crossed should be.”
Said the pie, “Then some straw and moss mix
In the way you now see done by me.”
“O yes, certainly,” said the jackdaw,
“That must follow, of course, I have thought;
Though I never before building saw,
I guess’d that, without being taught.”
“More moss, more straw, and feathers, I place
In this manner,” continued the pie.
“Yes, no doubt, madam, that is the case;
Though no builder myself, so thought I.”
Whatever she taught them beside,
In his turn every bird of them said,
Though the nest-making art he ne’er tried
He had just such a thought in his head.
Still the pie went on showing her art,
Till a nest she had built up half-way;
She no more of her skill would impart,
But in her anger went fluttering away.
And this speech in their hearing she made,
As she perch’d o’er their heads on a tree:
“If ye all were well skill’d in my trade,
Pray, why came ye to learn it of me?”
When a scholar is willing to learn,
He with silent submission should hear;
Too late they their folly discern,
The effect to this day does appear.
For whenever a pie’s nest you see,
Her charming warm canopy view,
All birds’ nests but hers seem to be
A magpie’s nest just cut in two.[A]
[A] I beg to inform my young readers that the magpie is the only bird that builds a top to the nest for her young.
