by CHRISTOPHER MORLEY
I WAS wondering how to spin
A lyric for my youngest kin
(Exactly three days old)
When in the garden’s twilight hush
I was accosted by a thrush
Unusually bold.
Diving from the dogwood tree,
Not four yards off he studied me;
His speckle-vest erected,
Then, with beak so open-wide
That I could see his pink inside,
His lesson he projected.
Three-toned, the treble-war bled note
Came all native from his throat,
Incomparable flautist!
He gazed, tutorial, to say
That, glissando, is the way,
In case you never noticed.
All of a sudden he took shy,
Embarrassed-like; and so did I.
A firefly lit a taper —
Thrush pretended to take a bath,
While I went in across the path
And found this piece of paper.