Parleyings with Certain People of Importance…

I

How strange! -- but, first of all, the little fact / Which led my fancy forth. This bitter morn / Showed me no object in the stretch forlorn / Of garden-ground beneath my window, backed / By yon worn wall wherefrom the creeper, tacked / To clothe its brickwork, hangs now, rent and racked / By five months' cruel winter, -- showed no torn / And tattered ravage worse for eyes to see / Than just one ugly space of clearance, left / Bare even of the bones which used to be / Warm wrappage, safe embracement: this one cleft -- / -- Oh, what a life and beauty filled it up / Startlingly, when methought the rude clay cup / Ran over with poured bright wine! 'T was a bird / Breast-deep there, tugging at his prize, deterred / No whit by the fast-falling snow-flake: gain / Such prize my blackcap must by might and main -- / The cloth-shred, still a-flutter from its nail / That fixed a spray once. Now, what told the tale / To thee, -- no townsman but born orchard-thief, -- / That here -- surpassing moss-tuft, beard from sheaf / Of sun-scorched barley, horsehairs long and stout, / All proper country-pillage -- here, no doubt, / Was just the scrap to steal should line thy nest / Superbly? Off he flew, his bill possessed / The booty sure to set his wife's each wing / Greenly a-quiver. How they climb and cling, / Hang parrot-wise to bough, these blackcaps! Strange / Seemed to a city-dweller that the finch / Should stray so far to forage: at a pinch, / Was not the fine wool's self within his range / -- Filchings on every fence? But no: the need / Was of this rag of manufacture, spoiled / By art, and yet by nature near unsoiled, / New-suited to what scheming finch would breed / In comfort, this uncomfortable March.