The bough beneath me shakes and swings.
“While tender love wants most your wings
Why are you flying from our nest?
That love, first opened by your beak,
You taught to peck, and then to speak
The few short words you liked the best,
Come back again, soft cowering breast!
Do not you hear or mind my call?
Come back! come back! or I may fall
From my high branch to one below;
For there are many in our trees,
And part your flight and part the breeze
Slay shake me where I would not go.
Ah! do not then desert me so!