Birds, Bees and Blossoms :: :: University of Virginia Library

Chirrup! chirrup! here we all be,
A noisy thieving company.
We are the poor birds of the street;
Where there's a house you will us meet,
And where poor children most abound
There we are always to be found,
Like them playing on the ground.

In the courts and alleys we play,
Like them all the livelong day;
They rummage the gutters, so do we,
Pouncing on the first crust we see;
Under the eaves like them we lie,

Up in the attic near to the sky:
He watcheth us all who reigns on high.

A crust of bread, to play they go,
Leaving for us a crumb or so:
Nothing's wasted nor thrown away
Where sparrows and poor children play.
No doubt we both are a poor race,
But we each live in a poor place,
Though poverty is no disgrace.

If you would smell real London smoke,
In our nests your nose just poke;
And if it doesn't make you sneeze,
May I never more taste cheese!
We strive our hardest to keep clean,
Wash and rub, and dust and preen,
And then are scarce fit to be seen.

Down come smuts, down come “blacks,”
On our heads, and tails, and backs:
And then the dust below they make,
When their dirty mats they shake;
Why it comes drifting up in heaps,
Into our very beds it creeps,
And makes us all as black as sweeps.

Cats, too, do so plague our lives,
Chasing our husbands and our wives;
As for a sister, or a brother,
They're sure to have one or t'other.
'Tis bad enough to live near rats,
Be hunted by poor ragged brats,
But nothing when compared to cats.