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Home  »  English Poetry I  »  188. Call for the Robin-Redbreast

English Poetry I: From Chaucer to Gray.
The Harvard Classics. 1909–14.

John Webster

188. Call for the Robin-Redbreast

CALL for the robin-redbreast and the wren,

Since o’er shady groves they hover

And with leaves and flowers do cover

The friendless bodies of unburied men.

Call unto his funeral dole

The ant, the field-mouse, and the mole

To rear him hillocks that shall keep him warm

And (when gay tombs are robb’d) sustain no harm;

But keep the wolf far thence, that’s foe to men,

For with his nails he’ll dig them up again.