"Lie still, little nestlings! lie still while I tell,
For a lullaby story, a thing that befell
Your plain little mother one midsummer morn,
A month ago, birdies—before you were born.
"I'd been dozing and dreaming the long summer night,
Till the dawn flushed its pink through the waning moonlight;
When—I wish you could hear it once!—faintly there fell
All around me the silvery sound of a bell.
"Then a chorus of bells! So, with just half an eye,
I peeped from the nest, and those lilies close by,
With threads of a cobweb, were swung to and fro
By three little rollicking midgets below.
"Then the air was astir as with humming-birds' wings!
And a cloud of the tiniest, daintiest things
That ever one dreamed of, came fluttering where
A cluster of trumpet-flowers swayed in the air.
"As I sat all a-tremble, my heart in my bill—
'I will stay by the nest,' thought I, 'happen what will;'
So I saw with these eyes by that trumpet-vine fair,
A whole fairy bridal train poised in the air.
"Such a bit of a bride! Such a marvel of grace!
In a shimmer of rainbows and gossamer lace;
No wonder the groom dropped his diamond-dust ring,
Which a little elf-usher just caught with his wing.
"Then into a trumpet-flower glided the train,
And I thought (for a dimness crept over my brain,
And I tucked my head under my wing), 'Deary me!
What a sight for a plain little mother like me!'"
Mary A. Lathbury.