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Project Gutenberg Australia HomeReturn to Index of Poems
Some like to call him organ bird,
But butcher bird is apt;
He sings the sweetest song that’s heard
When autumn’s robes are wrapt
In mellow tints about the hills.
And leaves the blossoms drop;
But where his music charms and thrills,
He keeps a butcher’s shop.
His glorious pipe-like notes roll out
With power in early morn,
And float among the trees about
As from some elfin horn;
A song that is so pure and clear,
Its sweetness bids me stop,
And I would fain forget that near
He keeps a butcher’s shop.
Sharp thorns and splinters are its hooks,
Its block a limb outflung,
And strange to other eyes it looks
With birds and reptiles hung,
Where drooping leaves for roof suffice,
And he may fill his crop
With beetles, too, or grubs or mice
That stock his butcher’s shop.
A goblin to the babbling thrush,
And all the tiny throng,
Is butcher bird, and yet the bush
Is richer for his song;
Wherever bides the savage clan
The midgets fear to hop,
But vermin mingles with the scran
That’s in his butcher’s shop.
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