Explore "Birds and Bards" by Franklin P. Adams on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
When Milton sang "O nightingale / That on yon gloomy spray," / The sonneteer whom we revere / Lauded that birdie's lay.
While Keats's ode upon that bird / Was limpid as the notes / That, sweet and strong, were in the song / Of Philomelian throats.
And Bryant's "To a Water-fowl! " / Had praise in every line, / And every word about the bird / Impinged on the divine.
When Wordsworth did the skylark stuff, / He praised the bird a few, / And Shelley's ode sincerely showed / He liked the skylark, too.
O Poets, if ye had but dwelt / Upon a Harlem block, / Fain would I read your poems sweet / Upon the sparrows' "Peet! Peet! Peet!"
The sparrows that have built their nest / Ten feet from where one takes one's rest, / And 'gin their merry, blithesome song / Each morning -- quenchless, clear and strong / Promptly at four o'clock.