@3WHAT bird, if you could be a bird, Would you desire to be?@1 Such was the questioning I heard Behind the tulip-tree, Where Nance and Meg and Jenny sat, All showing careless inches Of stocking to the hungry gnat, And chirped like fifty finches! I thereupon began to think What changes best would suit: For Meg, who's plump, I chose a pink, To hop among the fruit. For freckled Jenny's birdlike change, Because she's never-resting, I picked the busy quaketail's range Of flirt and cheep and questing. Too hard the cherryfinch's peck For Nance to wear his shape; Too red the robin's flooded neck, Too brown the titlark's nape. As feathering well the dearest third According to my fancy, A whitethroat seemed the only bird For whiter-throated Nancy! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...SONG OF SAUL BEFORE HIS LAST BATTLE by GEORGE GORDON BYRON APOLLO by THOMAS HOLLEY CHIVERS THE EMPEROR'S BIRD'S-NEST by HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW SONNET: 27 by JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL HOUSEHOLD POEMS: 1. BRONWEN by PHILIP EDWARD THOMAS LINES TO BE SPOKEN BY THOMAS DENMAN.....WHEN FOUR YEARS OLD by ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD |