I AM a lone, unfathered chick, Of artificial hatching, A pilgrim in a desert wild, By happier, mothered chicks reviled, From all relationships exiled, To do my own lone scratching. Fair science smiled upon my birth One raw and gusty morning; But ah, the sounds of barnyard mirth To lonely me have little worth; Alone am I in all the earth -- An orphan without borning. Seek I my mother? I would find A heartless personator; A thing brass-feathered, man-designed, With steam-pipe arteries intermined, And pulseless cotton-batting lined -- A patent incubator. It wearies me to think, you see -- Death would be better, rather -- Should downy chicks be hatched of me, By fate's most pitiless decree, My piping pullets still would be With never a grandfather. And when to earth I bid adieu To seek a planet greater, I will not do as others do, Who fly to join the ancestral crew, For I will just be gathered to My incubator. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...A LONDON PLANE-TREE by AMY LEVY TAPESTRY TREES by WILLIAM MORRIS (1834-1896) A BOY'S MOTHER by JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY THE BOSPHORUS REVISITED by SEYMOUR GREEN WHEELER BENJAMIN DENNER'S OLD WOMAN by VINCENT BOURNE WALL STREET by RICHARD EUGENE BURTON |