Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

BLUE JAY by JOHN TROTWOOD MOORE

First Line: O THE WORLD IS ALL AGAINST YOU, BLUE JAY
Last Line: AND SEES HIMSELF TO-DAY.
Subject(s): BIRDS; HUNTING; HUNTERS;
O, THE world is all against you, Blue Jay,
Blue Jay;
O, the world is all against you now, I say,
With your tweedle, tweedle, tweedle,
And your jay! jay! jay!
And your saucy, whistling wheedle
Just before you fly away
To pounce down on the juciest and the sweetest roasting ear;
To steal the ripest Concords in the sunshine purpling near;
To run off all the song-birds with your blust'ring, bragging tongue,
And break the hearts of mother birds by eating up their young—
Then to perch up on the highest limb upon the apple tree
And call up mourners 'round you with your tweedle, tweedle, twee'!
You're a robber, robber, robber,
Blue Jay, Blue Jay,
And a hypocrite and bully,
As all the world doth say.

O, the world is all against you, Blue Jay, Blue Jay;
O, the world is all against you now, I say,
But your tweedle, tweedle, tweedle,
And your jay! jay! jay!
And your saucy, laughing wheedle
Brought again to me, to-day,
The time we stole together, in the summer long ago,
The cherries and the peaches and the grapes of purple glow.
The day we climbed the chestnut for the yellow hammer's nest,
And you gave it up, disconsolate, because I robbed the best!
And I see the old home once again, the fig trees in the sun,
While a boy slips all around them with a single-barrel gun,
And he brings it to his shoulder as he sees a bobbing head—
Bang! and he's a murderer—for old Blue Jay is dead!
Was I a robber, robber,
In the summer long ago,
When I barbecued and ate you
With my sportsman's pride aglow?

Ah, some grown-up folks are like you, Blue Jay,
Blue Jay;
Ah, some grown-up folks are like you now, I say—
For they tweedle, tweedle, tweedle,
When they wish to have their way,
And they wheedle, wheedle, wheedle.
In their tricks of trade to-day,
And they pounce upon their fellow-man and steal his very best—
His eggs of reputation, and his cherries—happiness,
And you'll find their crops distended with the plunder they have won,
While their tongues are shooting slander (ah, 'tis worse than any gun),
And they thrive and fill and fatten till they go to get their due
In another world—Oh, Blue Jay, won't they make a barbecue?
Then sing away your robber song
Of jay! jay! jay!
Till some robber mortal comes along
And sees himself to-day.



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