Scottish Poetry Selection
- A Blackbird's Nest
Blackbirds usually build their nests in sensible places like hedges and trees, but on occasions they can create their "des res" in the most unusual places. We have all seen photos in newspapers of blackbirds sitting in motor cars or in railway stations, defying anyone to move them on. The blackbird in Alexander Anderson's poem, however, seems to have chosen a very noisy spot!
A Blackbird's Nest
She sits upon her nest all day,
Secure amid the toiling din
Of serpent belts that coil and play,
And, moaning, ever twist and spin.What cares she for the noise and whirr
Of clanking hammers sounding near?
A mother's heart has lifted her
Beyond a single touch of fear.Beneath her, throbbing anvils shout,
And lift their voice with ringing peal,
While engines groan and toss about
Their tentacles of gleaming steel.Around her, plates of metal, smote
And beat upon by clutch and strain,
Take shape beneath the grasp of thought--
The mute Napoleon of the brain.She careth in nowise for this,
But, as an anxious mother should,
Dreams of a certain coming bliss--
The rearing of her callow brood.Thou little rebel, thus to fly
The summer shadows of the trees,
The sunlight of the gracious sky,
The tender toying of the breeze.What made thee leave thy leafy home,
The deep hid shelter of the tree,
The sounds of wind and stream, and come
To where all sounds are strange to thee?Thou wilt not answer anything;
Thy thoughts from these are far away;
Five little globes beneath thy wing,
Are all thou thinkest on to-day.
Where else would you like to go in Scotland?
