THE PATTICHAP’S NEST.
Well! in my many walks I’ve rarely found
A place less likely for a bird to form
Its nest; close by the rut-gulled wagon-road,
And on the almost bare foot-trodden ground,
With scarce a clump of grass to keep it warm,
Where not a thistle spreads its spears abroad,
Or prickly bush to shield it from harm’s way;
And yet so snugly made, that none may spy
It out, save peradventure. You and I
Had surely passed it in our walk to-day,
Had chance not led us by it! Nay, e’en now,
Had not the old bird heard us trampling by,
And fluttered out, we had not seen it lie
Brown as the roadway side. Small bits of hay
Pluck’d from the old prop’d haystack’s pleachy brow,
And withered leaves, make up its outward wall,
Which from the gnarled oak-dotterel yearly fall,
And in the old hedge-bottom rot away.
Built like an oven, through a little hole,
Scarcely admitting e’en two figures in,
Hard to discern, the bird’s snug entrance win.
’Tis lined with feathers, warm as silken stole,
Softer than seats of down for painless ease,
And full of eggs scarce bigger ev’n than pease.
Here’s one most delicate, with spots as small
As dust, and of a faint and pinky red.
* * * * *
A grasshopper’s green jump might break the shells;
Yet lowing oxen pass them morn and night,
And restless sheep around them hourly stray.
John Clare.