Author’s Add‑end‑’em

If you have read my former words,
And learned to recognize the Birds,
And how to tell them from the Flowers,
And know these Analogues of ours,
You never need be led astray
By Darwin, Audobon, or Gray,
Whose writings, though considered classic,
Savor some‑what of the Jurassic.
Your work though is but just begun,
While mine, I’m glad to say, is done.
To you the field I now leave clear,
Upset my ink, and disappear!

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–#L12.

Cite this poem

Robert Williams Wood (1868–1955). “Author’s Add‑end‑’em.” First published in How to Tell the Birds from the Flowers and Other Woodcuts (1917). Text: Poem Index, https://poemindex.org/robert-williams-wood/authors-add-end-em/. Append #L14 to cite line 14, or #L4-L9 for lines 4–9.

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