PETER PIGEON
THE pigeons dwell in Pimlico; they mingle in the street;
They flutter at Victoria around the horses' feet;
They fly to meet the royal trains with many a loyal phrase
And strut to meet their sovereign on strips of scarlet baize;
But Peter, Peter Pigeon, salutes his cradle days.
The pigeons build in Bloomsbury; they rear their classic homes
Where pedants clamber sable steps to search forgotten tomes;
They haunt Ionic capitals with learned lullabies
And each laments in anapaests and in iambics cries;
But Peter, Peter Pigeon, how sleepily he sighs!
The pigeons walk the Guildhall; they dress in civic taste
With amplitude of mayoral chain and aldermanic waist;
They bow their grey emphatic heads, their topknots rise and fall,
They cluster in the courtyard at their midday dinner call;
But Peter, Peter Pigeon, he nods beneath my shawl.
The pigeons brood in Battersea; while yet the dawn is dark
Their ready aubade ripples in the plane-trees round the park;
They light upon your balcony, a brave and comely band,
Till night decoys their coral feet, their voices low and bland;
But Peter, Peter Pigeon, his feet are in my hand.
"I AM GLAD THE MARTINS ARE
BUILDING AGAIN...."
I AM glad the martins are building again,
They had all departed
From the old deserted
House by the stream;
Its windows were black to the snow and the rain
And the sky and the sun,
And the river sobbed on,
Like a child in a dream,
Under the unlopped sycamore boughs
That stifled the old stone house.
Now the axe-edge is blue on the sycamore rind,
By the workers huzza'd
Till the ashlared façade
Outpeers its disguise;
Now little white curtains flap out to the wind
Across the grey sills
And summer instils
The peace of the skies
And the zest of the sun into every old room
So given to grief and gloom.
And the children who wake the green walks with their mirth
And lift the shy heads
Of the flowers from their beds,
By a strange cry stirred—
Desert their dear pastime, look up from the earth,
Up, up, through the leaves
Where under the eaves
Clings the back of the bird:
And his nest-mate white-throated regards the new day
From her arch of inverted clay.