Hark, love, while through this wood we walk,
Beneath melodious trees,
How wrens with redbreasts ever talk
What tuneful words they please…
No graybeard linguist, love, could vie
With our large learning, then!
You’d speak to me in Redbreast;
I Would answer you in Wren!
~Edgar Fawcett, “Bird-Language,”
Songs of Doubt and Dream, 1891
