The Butter‑ball; The Butter‑cup

The little Butter‑cup can sing,
From morn ’till night like anything.
The quacking of the Butter‑ball,
Cannot be called a song at all.
We thus the flower may learn to know,
Its song is reproduced below.

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). “The Butter‑ball; The Butter‑cup.” First published in How to Tell the Birds from the Flowers and Other Woodcuts (1917). Text: Poem Index, https://poemindex.org/robert-williams-wood/the-butter-ball-the-butter-cup/. Append #L14 to cite line 14, or #L4-L9 for lines 4–9.

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