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.
