The Clover; The Plover

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

The Plover and the Clover can be told apart with ease,
By paying close attention to the habits of the Bees,
For En‑to‑molo‑gists aver, the Bee can be in Clover,
While Ety‑molo‑gists concur, there is no B in Plover.

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–#L4.

Cite this poem

Robert Williams Wood (1868–1955). “The Clover; The Plover.” 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-clover-the-plover/. Append #L14 to cite line 14, or #L4-L9 for lines 4–9.

More by Robert Williams Wood