HOPE IS THE THING WITH FEATHERS
Author: Emily Dickinson

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chilliest land
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

 

MOTHER PARROT'S ADVICE TO HER CHILDREN
Author: Ganda, Africa Translated by A.K. Nyabongo

Never get up till the sun gets up,
Or the mists will give you a cold,
And a parrot whose lungs have once been touched Will never live to be old.
Never eat plums that are not quite ripe,
For perhaps they will give you a pain:
And never dispute what the hornbill says,
Or you'll never dispute again.
Never despise the power of speech:
Learn every word as it comes,
For this is the pride of the parrot race,
That it speaks in a thousand tongues.
Never stay up when the sun goes down,
But sleep in your own home bed,
And if you've been good, as a parrot should,
You will dream that your tail is red.

 

THE PARROT
Author: James Elroy Flecker

Now if you'd train a parrot, catch him young
While soft the mouth and tractable the tongue.
Old birds are fools: they dodder in their speech,
More eager to forget than you to teach;
They swear one curse, then gaze at you askance,
And all oblivion thickens in their glance.

Thrice blest whose parrot of his own accord
Invents new phrases to delight his lord,
Who spurns the dull quotidian task and tries
Selected words that prove him good and wise.
Ah, once it was my privilege to know
A bird like this . . .
But that was long ago!

 

THE PARROT
Author: Edward Lucie-Smith ©

The parrot is a thief.
No word
Is safe in earshot
Of that bird.

He picks it up.
He turns it round.
He croaks.
He tries it out for sound

And then he says it,
Loud and clear,
And all the neighbours
Know you swear.