The Pettichap's Nest

It shines o'er many a whispered pledge,
By fondness told again;
In cowsheds by the woodland hedge,
'Neath hawthorns by the lane.

It brings the balm to summer nights,
Like incense from afar,
And every musing mind delights
To hail the Evening Star.

WELL! in my many walks I've rarely found
A place less likely for a bird to form
Its nest — close by the rut-gulled waggon-road,
And on the almost bare foot-trodden ground,
With scarce a clump of grass to keep it warm!
Where not a thistle spreads its spears abroad,
Or prickly bush, to shield it from harm's way;
And yet so snugly made, that none may spy
It out, save peradventure. You and I
Had surely passed it in our walk to-day,
Had chance not led us by it! — Nay, e'en now,
Had not the old bird heard us trampling bye,
And fluttered out, we had not seen it lie,
Brown as the road-way side. Small bits of hay
Plucked from the old propt haystack's pleachy brow,
And withered leaves, make up its outward wall,
Which from the gnarl'd oak-dotterel yearly fall,
And in the old hedge-bottom rot away.

Built like an oven, through a little hole,
Scarcely admitting e'en two fingers in,
Hard to discern, the birds snug entrance win.
'Tis lined with feathers warm as silken stole,
Softer than seats of down for painless ease,
And full of eggs scarce bigger even than peas!

Here's one most delicate, with spots as small
As dust, and of a faint and pinky red.
— Well! let them be, and Safety guard them well;
For Fear's rude paths around are thickly spread,
And they are left to many dangerous ways.

A green grasshopper's jump might break the shells,
Yet lowing oxen pass them morn and night,
And restless sheep around them hourly stray;
And no grass springs but hungry horses bite,
That trample past them twenty times a day.

Yet, like a miracle, in Safety's lap
They still abide unhurt, and out of sight.
— Stop! here's the bird — that woodman at the gap
Frightened him from the hedge: — 'tis olive-green.

Well! I declare it is the Pettichap!
Not bigger than the wren, and seldom seen.
I've often found her nest in chance's way,
When I in pathless woods did idly roam;
But never did I dream until to-day
A spot like this would be her chosen home.