THE FAIRIES' FLITTING.
There's a family of fairies lives inside our pigeon-cot,
Down the garden, near the great big sumach-tree,
Where the grass has grown across the path and dead leaves lie and rot
And no one hardly ever goes but me;
Yes, it's just the place for fairies, and they told the pigeons so;
They begged to be allowed to move in soon;
It's a most tremendous honour, as of course the pigeons know;
It was all arranged this very afternoon.
There's a family of fairies lives inside our pigeon-cot—
Oh, the bustle and the sweeping there has been!
For the pigeons didn't scrub their house (I think they all forgot),
And the fairies like their home so scrup'lous clean;
There are fairy dusters hanging from the sumach as you pass;
Tiny drops are dripping still from overhead;
Broken fairy-brooms are lying near the fir-tree on the grass,
Though the fairies went an hour ago to bed.
There's a family of fairies lives inside our pigeon-cot,
And there's cooings round about our chimney-stack,
For the pigeons are all sitting there and talking such a lot
And there's nothing Gard'ner does will drive them back;
"Why, they'll choke up those roof-gutters if they start this nesting fuss;
They've got a house," he says, "so I don't see—"
No, he doesn't know the secret, and there's no one does but—us,
All the pigeons, and the fairy-folk and ME!
