• Author: Caley, Mary Allen
• Editor: B-7413
• Newspaper: The Umpire volume 6
• Page Number:
• Date: 5 23 1917
• Tags:
• poetry

A NEST IN THE PRISON WALL

Pray little bird, why chose ye wall so grim Whereon to build your nest? Why not the maple there, whose leafy limb Could offer shelter best? For have ye thought what other side reveals Of grim and shadowy life Where no bright beam of yonder sun e’er steals To banish sordid strife?

Without, high in the prison’s ninch’d wall Your tiny young you rear; While just within, the prisoner, though loud he call, No friendly ear could hear. Your little wings that carry you afar Mean freedom over all; The prisoner beats his hands against the bar— No help comes at his call.

Alas! that man with soul should crime commit And pine in dreary cell! While all without is cheerful, bright, sunlit, Within is living hell. Come, little bird, so free, so happy, take A message o’er the wall Which may perchance one’s soul-thirst gently slake— “God watches over all.”

May 18, 1917. —Mary Allen Caley.