Explore "Birds'-Nesting Time" by Joseph C. Lincoln on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The spring sun flashes a rapier thrust / Through the dingy school-house pane, / A shining scimitar, free from rust, / That cuts the cloud of the drifting dust, / And scatters a golden rain; / And the boy at the battered desk within / Is dreaming a dream sublime, / For study's a wrong, and school a sin, / When the joys of woods and fields begin, / And it's just birds'-nesting time.
He dreams of a nook by the world unguessed, / Where the thrush's song is sung, / And the dainty yellowbird's fairy nest, / Lined with the fluff from the cattail's crest, / 'Mid the juniper boughs is hung; / And further on, by the elder hedge, / Where the turtles come out to sleep, / The marsh-hen builds, by the brooklet's edge, / Her warm, wet home in the swampy sedge, / 'Mid the shadows so dark and deep.