THE FOWL OF A THOUSAND FLIGHTS

Grackle, Grackle on your tree,

There's something wrong to-day,

In the moonlight, in the quiet evening,

You will rise and croak and fly away;

Oh, you have sat and listened till you're wild for flight

(And that's all right)

But you have never criticised a single song

(And that's all wrong)

Lo, would you add despair unto despair?

Do you not care

That all these lesser children of the Muse

Shall sing to you exactly as they choose?

You are ungrateful, Fowl. I wrote a poem,

Once, in the middle of August, intending to show 'em

That you should not

Be shot:

What saw I then, what heard?

Multitudes—multitudes, under the tree they stirred,

And with too many a broken note and wheeze

They sang what each did please....

And Thou,

O bird of emeraldine beak and brow,

Thou sawest it all, and did not even cackle,

Grackle!

Henry van Dyke

(Who, although for different reasons, did not care for the Grackle either.)