Page 25 - Poetry-Animals

A Hen on Her Eggs

Ah! ah! this time I’ve got, I think, just five,
White as the moon upon an August night.
I long to see the contents well alive,
For those chicks, still unborn, are my delight.

My eldest egg—now let me pause and see:
He’ll be a valiant rooster-bird, of course,
Having the grace of the ailantus tree,
A linnet’s voice, the brute strength of a horse.

My second, I must very fondly dream,
Will be a poule de lettres, and very wise;
She in linguistics will be held supreme,
And she will learn the idiom of the flies.
That third, delicious, speckled egg of mine
Will bring me forth the handsomest of males,
With military genius, I opine—
A fowl the foe of garden slugs and snails.
That other there—that dotted little dear
Will cause my poor maternal mind regret;
For she will be, I positively fear,
The wayward Cleopatra of my set.
But, ah! the one that has a beauty mark
Right on the top, from Duty ne’er will quail;
She, Christian-like, will suffer in the dark
And be the chickens’ Florence Nightingale.
So saying, the hen clucked loudly in her joy,
And waved her wings upon the unhatched eggs;
But then appeared a stalwart poultry-boy,
With squinting eyes and odious crooked legs!

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