A Sparrer; Asparagus

Robert Williams Wood (1868–1955) · How to Tell the Birds from the Flowers and Other Woodcuts · 1917

Of the fall of the Sparrow we often have heard,
And I’ve here represented the fall of the bird:
In the case of Asparagus though, I may mention,
A fall such as this, is quite out of the question:
For observe that Asparagus, fat and well fed,
Spends all of his time in the ’sparagus bed.

Where this text comes from

First published in How to Tell the Birds from the Flowers and Other Woodcuts (1917). First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established. [1]

Structure read from the source's markup; the words have not been compared against a page scan. Last checked 2026-08-20.

Taken from Standard Ebooks, standardebooks/robert-williams-wood_how-to-tell-the-birds-from-the-flowers-and-other-woodcuts, how-to-tell-the-birds-from-the-flowers.xhtml. Rights: public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931).

Earlier sources (3)

This poem as JSON or plain text. Line anchors #L1–#L6.

Cite this poem

Robert Williams Wood (1868–1955). “A Sparrer; Asparagus.” First published in How to Tell the Birds from the Flowers and Other Woodcuts (1917). Text: Poem Index, https://poemindex.org/robert-williams-wood/a-sparrer-asparagus/. Append #L14 to cite line 14, or #L4-L9 for lines 4–9.

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