The Yellow‑hammer; The Saw‑fish

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

The Yellow-Hammer, or the Flicker,
More briefly “Golden-winged Wood-picker,”
My drawing of which striking bird
May seem to you perhaps absurd,
You even may suspect I stole
The idea from some Totem-pole:
But when you gaze upon the Fish,
You lose all patience and say “Pish!
I don’t believe you ever saw
A Saw‑fish look like this, Oh Pshaw!
There certainly is some mistake,
This is a saw‑did Nature fake,
In fact a perfect cata‑clysm
Of fishy Yellow-journalism.”

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]

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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–#L14.

Cite this poem

Robert Williams Wood (1868–1955). “The Yellow‑hammer; The Saw‑fish.” 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-yellow-hammer-the-saw-fish/. Append #L14 to cite line 14, or #L4-L9 for lines 4–9.

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