The Early Bird

A little bird sat on the edge of her nest;Her yellow-beaks slept as sound as tops;Day-long she had worked almost without rest,And had filled every one of their gibbous crops;Her own she had filled just over-full,And she felt like a dead bird stuffed with wool.

"Oh dear!" she sighed, as she sat with her headSunk in her chest, and no neck at all,Looking like an apple on a feather-bedPoked and rounded and fluffed to a ball,"What's to be done if things don't reform?I cannot tell where there is one more worm!

"I've had fifteen to-day, and the children five each,Besides a few flies, and some very fat spiders:Who will dare say I don't do as I preach?I set an example to all providers!But what's the use? We want a storm:I don't know where there's a single worm!"

"There's five in my crop," chirped a wee, wee birdWho woke at the voice of his mother's pain;"I know where there's five!" And with the wordHe tucked in his head and went off again."The folly of childhood," sighed his mother,"Has always been my especial bother!"

Careless the yellow-beaks slept on,They never had heard of the bogy, Tomorrow;The mother sat outside making her moan--"I shall soon have to beg, or steal, or borrow!I have always to say, the night before,Where shall I find one red worm more!"

Her case was this, she had gobbled too many,And sleepless, had an attack she called foresight:A barn of crumbs, if she knew but of any!Could she but get of the great worm-store sight!The eastern sky was growing redEre she laid her wise beak in its feather-bed.

Just then, the fellow who knew of five,Nor troubled his sleep with anxious tricks,Woke, and stirred, and felt alive:"To-day," he said, "I am up to six!But my mother feels in her lot the crook--What if I tried my own little hook!"

When his mother awoke, she winked her eyesAs if she had dreamed that she was a mole:Could she believe them? "What a huge prizeThat child is dragging out of its hole!"The fledgeling indeed had just caught his third!And here is a fable to catch the bird!