Poems (Prescott)/An Empty Nest

by Mary Newmarch Prescott

AN EMPTY NEST

Hidden by green grasses tall,
Close beside the orchard wall,
 A little sparrow built.
Laden boughs tossed overhead,
Apple blossoms, white and red,
 Which their odor spilt.

Sweeter home could not be found,
Should one search the green earth round
 Than this sparrow chose.
Neighborly the clover grew;
There the strawberry thickly blew,
 White as winter snows.

Wandering sunbeams found it out,
When the grasses blew about
 In each little breeze;
Fireflies, too, with flickering spark,
Seemed to blossom after dark
 In among the trees.

Three bare, shivering little things,
Waiting for their promised wings,
 Made the home complete.
What a life it was to live—
Summer long to take and give
 Just love's sweet for sweet!

Then, what melody divine
Soon would bubble, clear and fine,
 From each little breast!
What loud praise of flower or fern,
Rains that drench and suns that bum,
 Liquidly confessed!

But the strawberries ripened soon;
Every brood had found its tune,
 Every bird its wing;
Yet the three small sparrows left
In the stone wall's mossy cleft,
 Had not learned to sing!

Not a trill of bursting bloom,
Nodding grass or ferny plume,
 From the nest ran over;
All the summer passed unsung
By three sparrows, dead, among
 The rank and fragrant clover!