Explore "Thomas Ross, Jr" by Edgar Lee Masters on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
This I saw with my own eyes:
A cliff-swallow / Made her nest in a hole of the high clay-bank / There near Miller's Ford.
But no sooner were the young hatched / Than a snake crawled up to the nest / To devour the brood.
Then the mother swallow with swift flutterings / And shrill cries / Fought at the snake, / Blinding him with the beat of her wings, / Until he, wriggling and rearing his head, / Fell backward down the bank / Into Spoon River and was drowned.
Scarcely an hour passed / Until a shrike / Impaled the mother swallow on a thorn.
As for myself I overcame my lower nature / Only to be destroyed by my brother's ambition.