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George MacDonald - The Early Bird
Work rating: Low

A little bird sat on the edge of her nest;
Her yellow-beaks slept as sound as tops;
Day-long she had worked almost without rest,
And had filled every one of their gibbous crops;
Her own she had filled just over-full,
And she felt like a dead bird stuffed with wool.

"Oh dear!" she sighed, as she sat with her head
Sunk in her chest, and no neck at all,
Looking like an apple on a feather-bed
Poked and rounded and fluffed to a ball,
"What`s to be done if things don`t reform?
I cannot tell where there is one more worm!

"I`ve had fifteen to-day, and the children five each,
Besides a few flies, and some very fat spiders:
Who will dare say I don`t do as I preach?
I set an example to all providers!
But what`s the use? We want a storm:
I don`t know where there`s a single worm!"

"There`s five in my crop," chirped a wee, wee bird
Who woke at the voice of his mother`s pain;
"I know where there`s five!" And with the word
He tucked in his head and went off again.
"The folly of childhood," sighed his mother,
"Has always been my especial bother!"

Careless the yellow-beaks slept on,
They never had heard of the bogy, Tomorrow;
The mother sat outside making her moan—
"I shall soon have to beg, or steal, or borrow!
I have always to say, the night before,
Where shall I find one red worm more!"

Her case was this, she had gobbled too many,
And sleepless, had an attack she called foresight:
A barn of crumbs, if she knew but of any!
Could she but get of the great worm-store sight!
The eastern sky was growing red
Ere she laid her wise beak in its feather-bed.

Just then, the fellow who knew of five,
Nor troubled his sleep with anxious tricks,
Woke, and stirred, and felt alive:
"To-day," he said, "I am up to six!
But my mother feels in her lot the crook—
What if I tried my own little hook!"

When his mother awoke, she winked her eyes
As if she had dreamed that she was a mole:
Could she believe them? "What a huge prize
That child is dragging out of its hole!"
The fledgeling indeed had just caught his third!
And here is a fable to catch the bird!
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