Page:Our Common Land (and other short essays).djvu/155

 you a short poem now being painted on zinc by a lady, to put up on a wall of a tiny little garden in a court in Whitechapel which is under my care.

SONG OF THE CITY SPARROW.

When the summer-time is ended And the winter days are near; When the bloom hath all departed With the childhood of the year;

When the martins and the swallows Flutter cowardly away, Then the people can remember That the sparrows always stay.

That although we're plain and songless, And poor city birds are we, Yet before the days of darkness We, the sparrows, never flee.

But we hover round the window, And we peck against the pane, While we twitteringly tell them That the spring will come again.

And when drizzly dull November Falls so gloomily o'er all, And the misty fog enshrouds them In a dim and dreary pall;