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Songs of the shining way cover

Songs of the shining way

Chapter 13: BIRD’S-NEST HOLLOW.
By Sarah Noble Ives
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Poetry

About This Book

A collection of short, lyrical poems for children that follows a child’s imaginative progress from dawn through meadows, play, and fanciful travels along a luminous pathway. Vignettes blend simple narratives—first steps, coach rides, fairyland, voyages, and garden scenes—with reflective pieces on moonlight, insects, and rainbows, highlighting wonder, innocence, and small discoveries. The verses are compact and rhythmic, often voiced from a child’s perspective, and are accompanied by the author’s own illustrations that reinforce the gentle, dreamlike mood.

BIRD’S-NEST HOLLOW.

There is something puzzles me.—
In the hollow apple-tree,
Where the Shining Way is broadest, there’s a nest;
Two fat Robins live in it,
In and out I see them flit,
And the biggest wears a gorgeous crimson vest.
We are friends, and so when I
Come to look, they do not fly,
But they chatter from the branches of the tree;
And I run down there to play,
When the sun shines, every day,
And next year they say they’ll build a nest for me.
I peeped in one day, and found
Five small eggs, all blue and round,
And the Robins made me promise not to tell.
For (they said that this was so)
Jim and Alice must not know.
So I promised, and I’ve kept the secret well.
When to-day I climbed the tree,
Those two birds had company;
There were five small squirming children in the nest;
And the Robins whispered me,
’Twas a case of charity,
For the poor wee birdies were not even dressed.
And those little wriggling things
Had big mouths, but wore no wings,
And the Robins served refreshments down the row.
But the eggs are gone, you see;
That’s the thing that puzzles me.
Did those small birds eat them up, I’d like to know?