OLD CROW

The bird in the corn

Is a marvellous crow.

He was laid and was born

In the season of snow;

And he chants his old catches

Like a ghost under hatches.

He comes from the shades

Of his wood very early,

And works in the blades

Of the wheat and the barley,

And he’ s happy, although

He’ s a grumbleton crow.

The larks have devices

For sunny delight,

And the sheep in their fleeces

Are woolly and white;

But these things are the scorn

Of the bird in the corn.

And morning goes by,

And still he is there,

Till a rose in the sky

Calls him back to his lair

In the boughs where the gloom

Is a part of his plume.

But the boy in the lane

With his gun, by and by,

To the heart of the grain

Will narrowly spy,

And the twilight will come,

And no crow will fly home.