I AM a lone, unfathered chick, Of artificial hatching, A pilgrim in a desert wild, By happier, mothered chicks reviled, From all relationships exiled, To do my own lone scratching. Fair science smiled upon my birth One raw and gusty morning; But ah, the sounds of barnyard mirth To lonely me have little worth; Alone am I in all the earth -- An orphan without borning. Seek I my mother? I would find A heartless personator; A thing brass-feathered, man-designed, With steam-pipe arteries intermined, And pulseless cotton-batting lined -- A patent incubator. It wearies me to think, you see -- Death would be better, rather -- Should downy chicks be hatched of me, By fate's most pitiless decree, My piping pullets still would be With never a grandfather. And when to earth I bid adieu To seek a planet greater, I will not do as others do, Who fly to join the ancestral crew, For I will just be gathered to My incubator. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...IN A CUBAN GARDEN by SARA TEASDALE THE LAY OF THE LABOURER by THOMAS HOOD GROWING OLD by FRANCIS LEDWIDGE IF WE MUST DIE by CLAUDE MCKAY COMPOSED AT NEIDPATH CASTLE, 1803 by WILLIAM WORDSWORTH COURAGE THAT OVERCOMES by MARGARETE ROSE AKIN |